


sorrow surrenders its throne to grace

by alternatedoom



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Sex, Angst, Arguing, Brooding, Depression, Elves, Exoticism, F/M, Family, Gender Norms, Gratuitous Canon References, Internal Monologue, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Prostitution, Random Blood Elves, Recreational Drug Use, Rough Sex, Sex Pollen, Sex Talk, Stream of Consciousness, Tourism, Travel, Travelogue, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vaginal Fingering, meandering plot, post-War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-21 22:24:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 60,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7407484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatedoom/pseuds/alternatedoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of Wrathion's betrayal, Anduin falls into a depression. As he returns to feeling more like himself, he decides he wants to visit the Sunwell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I don't like breaking my stuff into chapters but either A03 or my browser was incapable of handling the whole story as one piece. So, chapters.  
> 2\. I've mangled the lore in places. Sometimes this is done thoughtfully and other times it's probably accidental.  
> 3\. Anduin is 17.  
> 

The hour is late when he and his father, Jaina, and Kalecgos finally return to the Violet Rise. Most of the personnel staying at the encampment sleep and dine in the numerous bright blue tents, but one of the smattering of fresh, still-shining new buildings is reserved for Jaina and her guests, so they pile in and order refreshment at nearly midnight. As his father knows well, and as Anduin has had plenty of opportunities to discover, battle stimulates the appetite like few things, and Anduin can see in their bright eyes that like him, they feel wide awake rather than sleepy.

But tonight Anduin has little appetite, though he allows a servant to refill his wine glass a fourth time. Jaina's stocked the Violet Rise largely with medium dry white wines, different from the bold cabernets his father favors, but her preferred vintages have grown on Anduin since he's been staying on the Rise. Jaina and Kalec spend less time eating and drinking and more time leaning into each other, holding hands, sharing smiles, and exchanging occasional chaste kisses. Jaina and Kalec are also the first to retire for the evening, leaving Anduin alone with his father, who attacks the cold roast chicken enthusiastically enough for both of them. Even far from home and in the middle of the night, Jaina's steward sets a beautiful, elaborate table, and Anduin normally loves the small, hot pastries stuffed with sweet raspberry glaze and melted Stormwind brie. He has two lying on his plate, and he picks at one, wishing he wanted to eat. The sight of his hand catches his eye; before coming inside, he'd stood at a basin and scrubbed at his hands with soap and water, but he still has bloodstains in a few of the creases of his fingers and in his cuticles.

"Are you ever going to tell me what Garrosh wanted so badly to talk to you about? I don't think you owe him anything in particular after..." His father waves a chunk of bread dipped in garlicky, herbed olive oil. "--after what happened."

Anduin raises his eyebrows at the question, then lets his eyes fall to the wood of the table. His father doesn't know the half of 'what happened.' He pictures Garrosh sitting calmly on his furs, Garrosh rising to bellow at him, Garrosh yanking his arm deeper into the cell, so close Anduin could feel the heat of his breath on a cheek. He remembers too Garrosh suggesting they talk about Anduin's fear. His _fear_. As though Garrosh had peered inside him just as Velen can. Anduin's stomach turns, making him regret the excess of drink.

"Anduin?" His father is looking at him questioningly.

"Yeah--I mean... no." Anduin hastily pulls himself out of the reverie, and unthinkingly he rubs the part of his arm that took the pressure and pain when Garrosh twisted the limb and pinned him. "You mean the 'I regret nothing' part of what happened?"

His father nods. "All those hours you spent with him, for him to more or less admit he asked you there just to toy with you..." Varian shakes his head disapprovingly.

Anduin feels his lips purse with disagreement. "That may be how it started off, and he may have chosen to double down on everything he did, but we had some serious conversations." Anduin thinks about it another moment, tipsy as he is from the wine. "No, I'm never going to tell anyone what we talked about. He trusted me, for better or worse. And I do owe him something. Not just spiritually, but personally." Anduin owes Garrosh as much as Garrosh owes him, he supposes. People die all the time from wounds much less serious than having an arm abruptly wrenched off.

His father gives him a strange, disturbed look. "If you say so." His father fiddles with the stem of his wineglass, rubbing it between thumb and index finger. "Though I hope if you realize something he said stands out in retrospect, anything that gives a clue to their plans, you'll let us know that at least."

Anduin thinks back over their conversations. "I would, and I will if I think of anything, but there was nothing."

His father nods and finishes his bite of oil-soaked bread, his face placid. "It's all right, Chromie will figure out where they went." He pauses thoughtfully. "I didn't mean to imply... that is..." His father trails off and starts again. "He seemed to genuinely respect you by the end. It says a lot of you."

Anduin smiles a little. He knows his father respects him, loves him, and cares about his opinions, because Varian Wrynn's words are decisive and authoritative with every single other person with whom he interacts. Only with Anduin, as far as Anduin's seen, does his father sometimes come across as unsure.

And yes, Garrosh decided by the end of their time together that Anduin was worthy of his respect as well as keeping both his arms. Which is not to say that he would take bets on his safety should he and Garrosh ever meet again.

Anduin nods. "Sorry I can't share," he offers with a half-apologetic grin.

"It's fine, it's only extremely morbid curiosity on my part." His father's smile surfaces easily, as though he expected the refusal, and fondly, with strong hints of pride coming through his expression. "No trust in you was ever misplaced."

Ordinarily Anduin would beam to hear words like those from his father, but the mention of trust misplaced only reminds him now of Wrathion, souring his mood. His father has thus far refrained from saying any variation on an 'I told you so,' even though Anduin knows he richly deserves one. He'd figured Wrathion all wrong. Or rather, he judged Wrathion dead-on initially but came to ignore his own good assessment.

He'd expected today to go quite differently. He knew once the trial in Kun-Lai was over, his father would almost certainly order him to return to Stormwind, and so he'd planned tonight to ask Wrathion to accompany him. Inviting Wrathion to come visit his home seemed like a protracted jump from inviting him to Garrosh's trial, which was after all open to the public, so Anduin had decided he'd wait to broach the subject until after the trial concluded. One thing at a time. The one-thing-at-a-time rule has served him well; he'd been prepared to have an argument with his father about bringing Wrathion beyond Stormwind's gates. Anduin was ready to force the issue to the point of demanding that either Wrathion would come alongside them and be welcomed, or he wasn't returning himself. He's glad now he didn't have that argument.

He'd been pretty sure Wrathion would say yes. Anduin didn't think it would come to this, but he'd thought if he were forced to rescind the invitation and stay in Pandaria, Wrathion would have been impressed by the reason why. And if the worst should happen, and his father got angry enough to lock him up for a while for disobeying a direct order from his king, Anduin's equally sure Wrathion would have been only too pleased to come to his rescue. Of course he'd have had to stand his ground, to refuse and stay put to make his point. His father putting him in prison for a few days was a distinct possibility given how angry he'd been over the only-too-recent revelations about Anduin's and Jaina's associations with Baine. But Anduin's confident a stint in jail wouldn't have gone beyond that, and maybe Wrathion would have stayed long enough to play some Jihui and keep him company in his cell. Wrathion might well have been entertained by the prospect.

Anduin's heart hurts.

Despite his anger at the treachery, Anduin had considered for the space of two heartbeats leaving out Wrathion's part in the conspiracy. His instincts steer him to protect the people for whom he cares, and he numbers Wrathion among them even now. But since Chromie and the Chu brothers overheard their whole conversation, that line of thought was a nonstarter. He wouldn't have gone through with it, anyway, even if Chromie and the Chus hadn't been present. His allegiance is to his father, their kingdom, and the Alliance. Not Wrathion, who demonstrated tonight that his heart is as black as the scales of his real body.

"... me, Anduin?"

His father's looking at him, and asking him something, and with an effort Anduin collects himself. "Sorry, what was that?"

"I said, will you come back to Stormwind with me, son?" His father puts the question diffidently, in a way that surprises Anduin even though he knew it was coming. His father makes it a request rather than a command, an inquiry respectful and hesitant enough for Anduin to feel a rush of warmth towards his father. His father is acknowledging Anduin's burgeoning independence in a way he never has before, and it's nice.

Anduin adores Pandaria, down to his bones, but he has fresh wounds he's yet to begin to lick, and he knows the continent will not feel quite so fascinating without Wrathion's red eyes and smooth expression welcoming him to his home away from home.

He takes only a moment to think it over, then nods. "Yes, I'm ready to go home."

* * *

Anduin still isn't tired when he finally lies down to sleep half an hour later, when he finds himself tossing and turning in his bed. He's had a long and insane day. He's been in a battle, had a friend turn on him, come this close to losing an arm and then an ear and then another friend, and he's had three and a half glasses of wine on an empty stomach. By all rights he should be fast asleep, and indeed he does feel emotionally exhausted. The fear and danger of the foes Kairoz unleashed, having to fight a dark and twisted version of Vol'jin, the horror of Jaina being shot... like so many events in his life, it's more excitement than he ever wanted, and he should be weary enough to sleep, but his mind buzzes on, turbulent with thoughts.

Most of all he can't get away from the memory of holding himself, a frightened, broken Anduin from another life and another time. He can't erase the sight of his doppleganger's lifeblood saturating his clothes and arms and hands, turning everything red, marking Anduin with his found courage and his death.

The anger at Wrathion passes swiftly. Purified or not, Wrathion was a black dragon, it's not like he'd concealed his nature as Onyxia had. Anduin knew better than to be taken in by him, but the time he'd passed in Wrathion's company lulled him into gullible complacency, if never actual trust.

Anduin never should have allowed his guard to slip so far.

And when he manages to get his mind off the sight of his own eyes closing for the last time, with the intensity of his gratitude to Chi-Ji faded into relief, with his peace at knowing he did all he could for Garrosh rather paled in light of the former warchief's raging, mocking parting speech, and with his anger at Wrathion subsided... what creeps in the darkness into Anduin's heart is despair.

Anduin has been making friends all his life. Wherever he goes he finds humans, dwarves, draenei to like who have likewise held him in high esteem. But until Wrathion, all the important people in his life were significantly older. He had so many adult friends, father figures, mentors and caretakers, he never felt the lack of friends his own age. He only felt lucky to know individuals like Bolvar, Aerin, Jaina, Magni, Valeera. Rohan and Velen both radically changed the course of his life. He tries never to take Wyll for granted.

People have been telling him since he was small how maturely he behaves for his age. Bolvar dismissed his lack of boyhood friends by saying Anduin had an old soul, and if Bolvar's efforts to comfort him through his isolated childhood were sometimes clumsy, Anduin remains grateful for them regardless.

And Anduin remembers Velen saying something of a similar ken when they met in Darnassus. _So young, and yet so old._ Archbishop Benedictus told him once he had an enlightened soul. But Anduin doesn't feel like his soul is particularly old or enlightened. If anything, he thinks, his soul feels young, untried, uniquely vulnerable, and now unprecedentedly wounded.

He's had what was in some ways his first real friendship tossed aside like it was nothing. Wrathion was the rare peer (more or less) who understood the heavy responsibilities laid on him, who understood where Anduin was coming from. Knowing him made Anduin feel uniquely awake and newly alive, and what they shared had been charged, a live thing, perhaps a dangerous thing, like a punctured gnomish battery or a burning spark of magic between them.

For Wrathion to discard their friendship in order to help Garrosh escape of all things--to utterly unknown ends--the betrayal feeds a thread of self-loathing Anduin never knew he had in him.

And that's all it was. A friendship, an intense friendship. Anduin won't name it as anything more. But he closes his eyes and imagines that instead of saying farewell and knocking him unconscious, Wrathion closes the distance between them and takes his hand. What happens after that is fuzzy; Anduin's eyes open of their own accord, and he doesn't mentally pursue the fantasy any further, because of course Wrathion wasn't going to take his hand or stop or do anything but follow his plan to its ultimate conclusion. Wrathion's not capable of less.

Jaina and Kalec have forgotten or simply neglected to put a silencing spell on their shared room. The tower is not especially large, with Anduin's quarters directly next door to theirs, and the gray stone walls do not contain sound as well as they might. Tapestries would probably help, but though the Thunder King has long since been defeated, the encampment remains utilitarian. If there's one thing the Violet Rise lacks, it's decoration.

Anduin doesn't begrudge the two of them their intimacy one iota. He's happy for them, fully and genuinely. Nevertheless it's still a little awkward to hear Jaina moaning in pleasure and Kalec occasionally grunting. And even though it's awkward, Anduin still listens. And even more than it's awkward, it makes Anduin aware of how lonely he feels.

His hand travels south under his sheet and he runs his palm over his groin, rubbing his cock and tugging gently at his balls before arranging them comfortably, but his mind usually wanders to Wrathion when he touches himself, and he can't think about Wrathion that way right now.

Like Jaina and Kalec, but for almost diametrically opposite reasons, Anduin sleeps little that night.

* * *

The next morning the four of them return to Xuen's temple one last time, to say their goodbyes. Self-preparation, steeling himself plus long years of diplomatic practice keep Anduin able to hold eye contact with Kalec and Jaina without blushing. He likewise keeps all thoughts about Kalec's stamina to himself.

Anduin wants to farewell Velen and Baine in particular, but he asks around and discovers Baine has already returned to Thunder Bluff.

So Anduin leaves his father, Jaina and Kalec with Lorewalker Cho and Taran Zhu, and he seeks out Velen to say goodbye. The connection to the Light that they share has always helped him instinctively suss out where to seek Velen, and he finds the Prophet in one of the open gazebo-style pagodas southeast of the temple, overlooking Yinying Village and the rocky cliffs to the sea.

Velen sits with his legs crossed, levitating a few feet in the air, moving peacefully up and down, slower than the rhythm of human breathing. He is not dressed particularly warmly, Anduin sees, clad in lightweight robes but seemingly comfortable all the same.

Velen's simple presence meditating soothes something in Anduin. He draws a deep breath, feeling the radiance of the Light that clings to Velen, a blessed relief as tangible to him as a cool breeze on a too-hot day. Just as he's about to speak a greeting, Velen rotates. Velen gazes at him without reaction before the corners of his mouth curve faintly up.

Master Velen has taught Anduin, nurtured him, counseled him, and pulled him back from the teetering brink of death, and when they find themselves alone, they're on familiar terms. Velen chooses not to waste their moments together with formal salutations. "You are returning with your father to Stormwind."

"Yes," Anduin confirms. "Later this morning."

Velen fixes him with that benign yet penetrating gaze he has, making Anduin feel like the Prophet is steadily seeing through him, or at least deep into his thoughts or heart or soul. The study is intimate but not unwelcome, and Anduin smiles a little. 

"You have grown so," Velen says distantly. "Inside and out."

"That is entirely thanks to you."

Velen acknowleges Anduin's gratitude with another hint of a smile, but dismisses it with a tiny shake of his head, as if to say his part in Anduin's recovery was nothing.

"You have loved and lost," Velen states, still regarding him thoughtfully. "And gained wisdom from it."

"It wasn't--" he begins automatically, a dismissal, but Velen gives him a look so gentle and reproving Anduin stops the mechanical denial, the claim it was only a friendship he's apparently prepared to stake out to anyone who asks.

Velen's warm kindness stirs up the ache in Anduin's heart, and tears prick at his eyes. "Yes," he admits instead, and blinks the wetness back, containing it for the moment. He swallows against the lump that rises in his throat and manages, "Yes except for the wisdom part. I don't... I don't think I gained any, and the whole thing was unwise in the first place. I was warned and I didn't heed the advice or the signs."

'Unwise' is too charitable a choice of words, Anduin thinks. 'Foolish' would be more truthful.

Velen flashes one of his wonderful, rare smiles. His teeth are white and perfectly aligned, and the expression alludes to the profound well of joy buried beneath his grave exterior.

Anduin never expected to be discussing Wrathion with Velen, however obliquely; generally his conversations with Velen during his study meandered and pivoted on a cosmic scale. Velen contemplates the future and the past, ruminates often on the Light and the nature of wisdom and knowing, but usually with an eye to the breadth of all the worlds and stars in the Twisting Nether. The sweeping losses to the Burning Shadow and the battle still ahead dominate his thoughts, and interpersonal conflicts and relationships, familial or otherwise, are not his preferred subjects on which to hold forth. Even faction conflicts do not long stay his attention.

But then, when needed... Anduin remembers an evening in the Temple Gardens of Darnassus years before, when Velen listened with compassion to his frustrated complaints about his father's near-obsessive sheltering. Velen appreciates the concerns of mortals living their short lives, even though his own burdens are far greater.

"Love is the beginning and the end, Anduin," Velen murmurs, his smile fading as quickly as it blossomed. "There is no shame in loving even unwisely. Wisdom flows down every step of the path, if we choose to see it."

Anduin takes that in, ponders a moment. What has he learned? He's learned he's a good instinctive judge of character, and he shouldn't ignore or be slowly coaxed out of his initial assessment of a person. He's learned that betrayal hurts so deep in your chest, it feels as though your heart will fail. He's learned in one night that abandonment wrecks the quality of your sleep, wreaks havoc on your appetite, and makes you hate yourself a little. He's been reminded he should listen more closely to his father's opinions, and to Jaina's. 

All around, hardly a set of lessons worth enduring the experience.

"I don't know, I think this might be a step I could have done without," he says, successfully fighting the tears back, though of course Velen sees his distress, would recognize Anduin's brimming emotions even if his ancient eyelids were lowered shut.

"Love is the seed from which grow all our hopes. Cleave to the Light, and never regret the fullness of your heart," Velen says, but from his tranquil intonation Anduin can tell his mentor's mind is already beginning to drift elsewhere, as it always does when he sits and meditates. 

"Goodbye Velen," he says.

"Until next time, Anduin," Velen answers, and with a last gentle look he rotates back to face the sea.

* * *

He's ashamed by how deeply the betrayal, the abandonment has affected him, but he's helpless to do anything about it.

His father notices his melancholy. Routinely they pause the endless stream of matters requiring his father's attention to eat a quick lunch side by side at corners of a small dining nook off the throne room. Anduin has less to say than usual these days, and one afternoon his father lays a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Anduin, what's troubling you?"

Anduin glances up at his father, keeping his face neutral. "Nothing," he says, though even the single word sounds lame to his own ears. Still, supposedly falsehoods are better when kept short, and this lie is one he's going to defend as long and fiercely as he needs to, whether it's believable or not. He breaks eye contact and takes a bite of his lunch, a blend of steamed spinach and feta cheese baked inside a pastry coffin. He barely tastes its richness.

"I want you to let a healer look at you. One of the physicians."

Anduin snaps his gaze back up. He mostly represses his frown, allowing his brow to furrow only slightly. He finishes chewing and swallows before answering. "Father, _I_ am a healer. And there's nothing wrong with me."

Yet his father persists--tentatively, but resolute in his decision nonetheless. "You haven't been yourself. Did you ever have anyone follow up on your head where the Black Prince hit you? You can't examine the back of your own head."

Anduin gives his father a long look. "I was hardly hurt," he lies, and because he's awful at relating anything but the truth he adds, "Anyway, I healed it myself. I don't need to see it to heal it."

"Humor me, please," Varian requests dryly, and then ventures even further. "I wouldn't ask if I weren't worried about you. You're not... enjoying life as you used."

"I'm fine," Anduin insists, and his father claps Anduin's shoulder once and drops both his hand and the topic, but his expression remains troubled.

Anduin studiously avoids the physicians' clinic for days, until an evening a little over a week later when the head physician and an assistant come knocking on his bedchamber door.

Anduin is annoyed because _he_ is a healer, proven competent numerous times over, and even if he can't inspect the back of his own head, he knows there's nothing physically wrong with him except the tiredness making his limbs sluggish, the vaguely ill feeling that's settled in his stomach, the dull ache in his heart persisting day in and day out. And no physician or priest and not even the Holy Light itself can do anything to fix away grief. But his father is the king, and Anduin reserves disobedience for the times it's most important. 

So he sits in his bed and lets the man measure his heartbeat and listen to his lungs and tap his knees with a metal instrument to test his reflexes. He strips and lies down so the man can poke and prod at his abdomen and run two firm fingers down along each of his femurs and his ulnas and his humeruses. The physicians promote wellness quite differently than the priests, and Anduin can't say he much likes their approach. The examination feels like an invasion of his privacy, one he neither needs nor wants. He cooperates half-heartedly, polite and internally resentful.

The physicians bow to him as they go, and it's the resentment more than anything else that makes him lock the door and stand naked afterwards in the center of his bedchamber. With his eyes closed and his arms held slightly apart from his sides, he calls forth the shadow. Hollow fingers claw up through his mind as he reaches into the void. As always, it's a bit frightening how fast and easily the trickling seductiveness of the darkness answers to his will, every bit as easily as the Light, and the day summoning the shadow becomes easier than the Light is the day he'll swear off it forever. He focuses to cloak his presence, to subdue the way the shadow writhes and seethes, and to insinuate tendrils of his thought and sight into the head physician's mind. A silent passenger, Anduin sees through his eyes, hears his words and thoughts both. Anduin's wholly unsurprised when the man straightaway heads to his father's study.

His father appears so clearly distressed, for a moment Anduin feels only guilt for his dark intrusion--but not enough guilt or regret to break his concentration. _"Well?"_

 _"He's physically in excellent health. What afflicts him is mental,"_ the head physician says, the wordless patter of nervous worry in the man's mind like a cold rain, and not so much for Anduin's welfare as for the varying possibilities of his father's reaction. Anduin can't blame the man. Even now, his father can be volatile. _"He's likely just depressed, your Majesty."_

 _"I see."_ His father's terse reply comes through a half-clenched jaw.

 _"Given time, I think he'll be fine,"_ the physician proceeds cautiously.

His father looks so unhappy, Anduin eases out of the physician's mind and exhales, releasing the shadow from his flesh and pushing the darkness away. He doesn't want to see any more.

He takes two steps and flings himself on his bed, only to struggle to pull the covers out from underneath his weight. For a second as he grips and tugs on the bedclothes his bones ache, but the discomfort passes, and soon he's curled up under the warmth of his sheet and blankets.

* * * 

Daily he goes through the motions, drags himself through what's expected of him. He sits in on his father's audiences with the citizenry and tries to listen to the judgements his father passes for criminals, and he sits in on the meetings for the budgets and the war councils. He attempts to pay attention to Genn Greymane's tedious diatribes about Sylvanas as they come. He eats and he makes himself smile and he visits the Cathedral of Light to pray. But he feels dull and weary all the time. The Light's warmth comforts his body but scarcely touches the ache in his chest.

A skirmish has Genn out of sorts today. "We should take action now," Greymane says angrily to Anduin's father. "This aggression will not stand."

Anduin wonders for the thousandth time where Wrathion is now. What he's doing, what he's planning. Left and Right will be with him, of course, and now Garrosh. Anduin wonders if Wrathion is finding the immense frustration and skin-crawling creepiness and occasional queer satisfaction in Garrosh's company that he did. It's difficult for Anduin to even imagine them talking, but he knows his father isn't the only person to wonder what Anduin himself found to discuss with Garrosh.

Perhaps Wrathion and Garrosh get along like old friends. They certainly share a grand sense of ambition.

And Wrathion must keep Kairozdormu at his side now. Kairoz is one of Wrathion's own kind, a younger dragon and as much a peer as Wrathion has with all the other black dragons perished. They probably understand each other in ways no human could ever hope to fathom, Anduin thinks bitterly.

Wrathion kept his own counsel about his associations, and he could be guarded about his comings and goings even when he and Anduin lived side by side in the exact same inns. Anduin has no idea whatsoever how much time Wrathion and Kairoz were spending together, at least not since he left the Timeless Isle to join his father and Jaina for the siege of Orgrimmar. But on the Isle Anduin had been unwillingly awarded a ringside seat from which to witness firsthand how well they got on. Staying in adjacent rooms in Graceful Swan's tiny, makeshift inn, Anduin experienced feeling passionate, resentful, possessive jealousy for the first time. Even now he continues to feel its rancorous echoes. Intellectually he knew it was ridiculous to feel jealous of Kairozdormu of all people. Completely, stupidly ridiculous.

And yet--undeniable jealousy. Merciless, embittered jealousy.

He disliked Kairoz and his knowing little smiles almost straightaway. But he'd never dreamed Kairoz would hatch a plot to subvert the trial, free Garrosh, and take him... somewhere. Even had he known, he'd never have imagined Wrathion joining in on such a strange conspiracy.

"-- just urges her on. This cannot go unanswered, and if we do not act now, when will we?" Genn demands of his father.

Anduin shifts in his chair and remembers the desperate moments when he thought Wrathion was about to murder him. Recalls the fleeting bewilderment on Wrathion's face. _Why would I do that?_ The note of surprised hurt in his normally unctuous, unaffected voice. _I care far less about them than I do you._

If Wrathion had wanted to kill him, Anduin couldn't have stopped him, but he's pretty sure he hurt Wrathion's feelings. Wrathion generally presented himself as untouchable, and it's a kind of power, the ability to wound with words. Anduin wonders how willingly Wrathion granted him that power.

And before that, when Anduin asked if they were friends. He recalls the deep contemplation on Wrathion's strange human face, the care he took in answering, the wistful amendment. _As much as I can have a friend, anyway._

Had Wrathion not felt what he felt? Anduin agonizes over it.

When he'd come to the Tavern disabled, the affinity between them was strong and almost instant. Wrathion's intense red eyes lit up when they locked on his, whether intimately across the Jihui board or from the far side of the crowded, clamorous common room during the dinner hour. But then, Anduin watched him manipulate visitors of both factions to the Tavern for months. He saw every day how Wrathion strove to make each person who visited with him feel special, singled out, vitally important to him personally. Does it make Anduin an utter fool to believe he was different?

But over and over again, at the Tavern and on the Timeless Isle and during Garrosh's trial, Wrathion sought him out to spend time in his company, and Anduin knows in his heart it wasn't because Wrathion was having a joke at his expense, wasn't using him to any particular end. Wrathion had felt the pull to him too, truly and genuinely. But even so, where did that leave him? It changed nothing. Wrathion was a friend willing to throw him over for Garrosh Hellscream and whatever conspiracy he and Kairoz have cooked up to remake Azeroth. Anduin knows that's what Wrathion wants to do.

And Anduin's bitter because Wrathion could at least have warned him somehow, or pushed him away beforehand so it didn't hurt this way. He knows Wrathion must have felt he couldn't have. He's still bitter.

He wonders whether Wrathion thinks at all about him, or perhaps he's too busy with Kairoz and Garrosh to find the time.

 _We are friends, you and I._

He has all of the questions, and none of the answers, and a bright, torn pain inside like the jagged golden time-rift Kairoz ripped in the floor of Xuen's Temple.

"You look a million miles away, and homesick," his father comments. Genn looks past his father at him and suddenly Anduin's the center of attention.

Anduin realizes his eyes have been distant and his mouth slack, and he pulls his expression back into neutrality. "No, I'm here," he insists.

* * *

But as Stormwind's head physician predicted, the sadness does begin to pass with with the weeks. Three months after Wrathion hit him over the head and left him, the hurt has shrunk to a small hole in Anduin's chest, small but still present, not wholly disappearing, but no longer spilling out a constant worrying sense of loss. He thinks of Wrathion less often, no more than a handful of times a day, and his core doesn't always feel raw and turned inside out, like his internal organs are exposed, when he pictures Wrathion's dark face and sly smile.

And as the ache recedes, his heart softens, and he starts to feel like himself again.

* * *

"I want to make a pilgrimage to see the Sunwell," he tells his father one evening at dinner.

Varian's reaction is immediate and strong--he blanches and almost drops his fork, catching it by the handle with Lo'gosh's reflexes as it slides through his hand. Had his mouth been full, he'd probably have choked on the turkey. "A _pilgrimage_? As in walking north through leagues of neutral and Horde territory for months on end? Absolutely not. Are you insane?"

Anduin represses a mischievous grin, shaping it into something smaller and less impish. "Not a traditional pilgrimage, I won't walk the whole way there. I'll travel to and from Silvermoon by mage portal. I'll only do the last leg by ship and on foot, like the elves do."

"Much too dangerous," his father says crossly, staring at him, the lines of his face folding down into a deep and displeased frown.

"I'll keep my guards with me at all times, and I'll be perfectly safe," Anduin says calmly. "If you didn't think Lor'themar was honorable, you wouldn't have wanted to bring the blood elves back into the Alliance."

His father's testy look slowly becomes a fierce glare, but Anduin withstands the force of it without flinching. "Trusting Lor'themar to serve the Alliance and take my orders in war is a ways away from bodily handing him my only son and heir," his father retorts.

Anduin raises an eyebrow, waiting.

His father doesn't disappoint him. "Fine, yes, he's an honorable man, and the blood elves are mostly an honorable race. That doesn't make it safe." Features dark, his father gestures angrily sideways for a refill of his wine. "Besides, they don't just let anyone in there, you know."

"Velen's been," Anduin points out. "He's the one who helped cleanse and resanctify it with the Light. And Lor'themar's been letting the high elves enter, despite their differences."

Curiosity briefly wins out over ire. "Why do you want to go there? What for?" His father sounds mystified.

"Why does anyone make a pilgrimage? It's a consecrated site. I want to see it and feel it and breathe it in."

"It's a well-lit room."

Anduin gives his father a sternly reproving look. "It's a room with a holy fount of water, created from the Well of Eternity, cleansed by a dying naaru, full of arcane magic. I'd say that's a little more than 'well-lit.'"

His father doesn't answer, but tears a roll in half rather irritably. The annoyance in the motion makes Anduin wonder if pressing for this trip is a bad idea, but it's now or never, so he continues.

"You left things in a good place with Lor'themar, didn't you?" Anduin prods. "After Jaina... after the violence in Dalaran?"

His father butters the roll, not meeting his eyes. "You read the message he sent. I wrote him a note back, carefully worded. It was inadequate, but there was nothing else to be done."

Anduin transfers his fork to his left hand, picks up his knife and cuts a slice of his meat, twirling the speared, bite-sized piece of turkey around in the gravy. "Well, Stormwind isn't Dalaran. Whether I go anywhere or not, you decided to open channels of correspondence with the blood elves. I think we should keep them open."

Varian lifts his eyes and takes a turn staring down his son. "As you plan to do with Baine Bloodhoof?"

Bite halfway to his mouth, Anduin flushes. Becoming friendly with Baine is not quite water under the bridge yet. He knows his father still feels lingering anger over the deceit by omission, and so a few pangs of guilt still tickle at the inside of Anduin's chest.

"Yes," Anduin answers honestly, temporarily lowering his fork. "More stuffing, please," he says to one of the servants. The dish is well-buttered and savory with rosemary, and Anduin's appetite has returned in full force. Turning back to his father, he elaborates. "The Alliance can only benefit from keeping diplomatic avenues open as much as is possible. Open with the tauren as well as the blood elves, and with the other races too if they're willing."

His father casts a beseeching look at him, swallows a bite of turkey and shakes his head slowly. "You're not an ambassador, Anduin. Ambassadors put their lives on the line daily. You're too important for that, and you can't go traipsing through Horde territory. Wandering all over Pandaria was bad enough."

"And that's why I won't be going as an ambassador," Anduin answers, all reasonableness. "I won't be going in any official capacity. I want to see the Sunwell, that's all. I'll be a polite ear and a gracious guest and come home. No traipsing. No diplomatic talks. No political talk of any kind." Playfully he mimes lacing his lips shut.

His father continues to look unconvinced. "As much as I'd like to have peace, Anduin, the Horde is still our enemy," Varian says flatly. "Perhaps not Baine, perhaps not Lor'themar, but neither of them controls the faction as a whole. The Horde stands in opposition to us."

"Perhaps, but Vol'jin's no warmonger. I believe he's honorable, and I know you agree because if you thought otherwise, you wouldn't have let him assume leadership of the Horde." He waits a moment to see if his father will contradict him in the name of the argument, but Varian remains silent. "And I don't think he'll object to my presence in Quel'Thalas," Anduin says. Of this he's confident too. "The trip can be announced and aboveboard, because it won't be political in nature. I'm not king, not a military leader. I'll just be a high-ranking follower of the Light hoping to be allowed to experience a holy site. I don't think Vol'jin will blink an eye."

Varian stares at him.

"Let me write to Lor'themar and ask if he'll allow it," Anduin urges. "He may say no, and that will be that."

Varian continues to gaze at him. "And if _I_ say no, will you do as I say, and refrain, and drop it?"

"With Lor'themar I will, with the Sunwell, yes," Anduin answers, still truthfully. He holds his father's eyes. "Not with Baine. Baine is a friend." Anduin takes another bite of his turkey, swallows and uses his napkin to wipe his mouth before he resumes. "He did an honorable task, defending Garrosh, and I didn't have a chance to say goodbye to him after the trial. It's not a secret anymore that we happened to meet and we liked each other. So I do intend to write. Just to say hi, really."

"Hmph."

Anduin leans forward on his elbows. "Come on, you wanted me to be interested in things again," he says lightly.

"Things here at home," his father answers, grumpy. Sensing the turning point of the argument, Anduin sits back in his chair and resumes his meal, waiting out the silent mental unraveling of an issue his father sometimes likes to do at his leisure.

His father's expression suggests he's still considering when they finish the turkey and Anduin's genteelly devoured his second serving of stuffing. Two servants enter with the third and final course, a baked-apple pastry, tart with lemon and sweetened with spoonfuls of fluffy cream. 

Anduin allows his father his time to think, picking up his dessert fork and digging in.

"All right," his father says finally, after a couple more minutes have passed. "I'd rather have you here, but... all right, you have my permission to ask under two conditions."

Anduin puts down his fork and gives his father his full attention. He raises his eyebrows, waiting expectantly to hear the caveats, reserving judgement.

His father pins him with a stare. "First--this is the last time I want you going into Horde territory for a good while. Don't even think about planning a visit to Orgrimmar next, diplomatic or friendly or religious or otherwise. We aren't that secure in this peace, much as I know you'd like to be."

Anduin nods. "All right," he agrees readily.

His father sighs and resettles himself in his chair, stretching a little. "Much as I'd like to be, too," he admits more quietly. "Think of Gallywix, he'd as soon take you a privileged hostage as look at you. Think of Sylvanas. Not all of the Horde is good, son, no matter how much you might wish otherwise." His father meditatively sips his wine. "I agree that Vol'jin's honorable, and I let him assume the mantle of warchief because I thought he could keep the others in line. But I don't have any illusions about the limitations of his power, and neither should you."

"I know," Anduin says, solemn because he does know, and he does understand, and he still does wish, too. 

"Not Baine either. I know you liked him," his father says before Anduin can object. "But the risks build when you do things like this."

Anduin folds his hands on the table, thinking. "If he were to invite me to Mulgore, after I visited Quel'Thalas, it would look bad for me to refuse. It would seem insulting. But... he probably wouldn't ever ask." One thing at a time, right? "And the second thing?"

His father smiles a bit sadly, an expression that deepens the crows' feet around his eyes. "Don't stay longer than a few weeks, because I'm going to miss you," he offers, and this second proviso is no demand, but an ever so slightly plaintive, clearly negotiable request. Anduin's noticed his father seems to be doing a lot of that lately.

Anduin's heart feels full, and his answering smile is wide enough to make his cheeks hurt. "I was thinking no more than two weeks," Anduin says warmly, and his father's smile deepens and solidifies. "Thank you, Father," he says with sincerity.

"Let me know when you hear back from Lor'themar," his father says, and he claps Anduin's shoulder as he pushes back his chair.

* * *

Anduin receives a reply eleven days later, during the end of the dinner hour, as they're finishing the last of a chocolate cake a couple of days old. His father silently watches him break the crimson wax seal on the parchment. Lor'themar's penmanship, and he does wonder if it's Lor'themar's writing or his scribe's, is long and slanted and looping, made with many flourishes.

_To His Highness Prince Anduin Wrynn,_

_As I am certain you know, to the sin'dorei the Sunwell is by far the most sacred place in all of Quel'Thalas, truly in all the world. Though we are presently allowing quel'dorei to enter the Sunwell, we do not often admit outsiders of the other races. However, as you are a devotee of the Light of some repute, we will permit an exception in your case, and we would welcome your respectful sojourn. When should we anticipate your arrival?_

_Warm regards,_

_Lor'themar Theron, Regent Lord of Quel'Thalas_

Anduin reads the message, his eyes flying over the words, and his father reads his smile. "He said yes, I gather," his father comments, and Anduin hands over the note.

"He always does this," his father says after he scans it. "Flowery expressions of courtesy, proportionally full of politely worded warnings."

Anduin quirks his eyebrows. "How much did you go back and forth with him?"

His father shrugs. "Six meetings and a handful of risky unsigned letters. Enough."

Anduin's puzzled. "I didn't realize you met with him that many times."

"You were here, there, and everywhere," his father says, a slight smile touching his face, but it fades quickly as he continues. "There was a lot to bring to the table. Details of sovereignty, financial support, compensation in goods, military support both ways, tariffs, the balance of trade, the possibilities as far as Garrosh's retaliation. Neither of us was willing to negotiate through emissaries. Too much was on the line."

"Military support both ways? I thought their numbers were such that--"

"Regiments of soldiers for them," his father says, making little circles on the polished wooden table with the base of his wineglass. "A battalion of mages for us, magisters and arcanists. An exchange of manpower for magic. We both stood to benefit."

"Oh." Anduin's still a little taken aback. "You must have been close to an agreement."

"The shift in allegiance was all but settled, we were hammering out details." His father sighs, his expression turning brooding.

"I didn't realize that." Anduin was, however, at Lion's Landing when Jaina came with the news that the Kirin Tor was theirs. His father had spoken positively in public of getting the Kirin Tor on their side, but privately... Anduin recalls well how moody his father had been when his plans with the blood elves fell apart due to Jaina's lash-out, and so he changes the subject. "Well, like he said, it's the most sacred place they have. You can't blame him wanting to make sure I'm not going to bellyflop into it."

His father snorts.

"Are you going to finish that?" Anduin asks, nodding at his father's plate. His father quit eating only halfway through his dessert, and the cake is delectable.

"No," Varian says, and pushes the dish towards him.

"Let's go pick a host gift from the wine cellar," his father suggests after Anduin has scraped the final bites of cake from both their plates and licked the last of the chocolate frosting off his fork. "Even if it's an informal, apolitical visit, you need to bring something."

"Definitely," Anduin agrees, hiding his surprise as he rises. He should bring a gift, absolutely, but Stormwind Keep has two sommeliers, Robbie and Margot, either of whom would be better equipped to select a suitable vintage for the blood elves than he and his father are. "Sure."

They walk side by side through the kitchens, drawing glances from the cooks and sous chefs with their unexpected appearance, and they descend single file down the spiral staircase to the wine cellars. Anduin used to like to sneak away and explore the castle as a child, but the wine cellar always struck him as borderline frightening, more so than the dungeons even. Perhaps because the wine cellar is so much more open and endless than the dungeons. Dark corridors of racks of bottles fade into black infinity, stacked in a room that must be almost a square mile, punctuated by support beams every ten feet, lit only by flickering oil lamps in wall sconces, and only a fraction of those are lit.

But though he can still imagine becoming hopelessly lost down here, the raw, chilly creepiness of the place has diminished with time, and Anduin peers around curiously, for he hasn't been down here in an age. The darkness remains oppressive, however, and so he concentrates and conjures the Light at his fingertips.

Varian pulls the lowest torch in the stairwell from its sconce and picks a direction, seemingly at random, and Anduin follows at his side. He's about to point out they're walking the wrong way when his father suddenly starts to talk. "The hearthstone Jaina gave you--she re-calibrated it, or re-enchanted it, or whatever the case is, to bring you to Dalaran now, is that right?"

His father wants to talk to him about something, Anduin understands now. Though why down here in the darkness of the wine cellar, he has no idea. His father gives him advice often, wherever they happen to be at any particular moment, so long as they have relative privacy and sometimes even when they don't. "Yes. Though not to her sitting room, anymore. Not to her residence at all. It takes me to the Hero's Welcome inn."

Varian's brow creases. "Is that safe?"

Anduin nods. "Yes, it's well protected. It's in the Exchange district. Jaina introduced me to the head innkeep, Isirami, and there are Silver Covenant guards about every five feet."

"Then I want you to use the hearthstone at the first sign of trouble. If so much as a fistfight happens near to you, use it and get out."

Frowning, Anduin balks at this instruction. "No. My sudden vanishing would give offense. Trust my judgement, please. I'll use the hearthstone if I feel unsafe."

"No, not if you feel unsafe, Anduin, you never feel as unsafe as you should," his father says with a trace of his old vehemence. Varian visibly takes a breath. "Use it if there's objectively a reasonable danger to your person," his father insists more calmly.

"Well, that wouldn't be a random fistfight happening in my vicinity."

"I recall they like sweet wines, mostly," his father says, ignoring his answer and leaving the previous subject there, and he glances around as though he has no idea where to go.

"I think wines are back this way," Anduin offers, pointing. They stroll towards the northeastern quadrant of the cellar, where the wines are stored. The sommeliers keep their collection so supremely well organized it's become a joke to those who come down here to carry bottles and cases in and out, but the space is sprawlingly huge and dim and while Margot and Robbie probably know the setup intimately, Anduin's unfamiliar with the layout of the subdivisions.

Varian pulls a brown glass bottle out of a rack, brings his torch close and looks at the pasted scrap of paper on the front. "Cognac, I guess we're not there yet." He slides the bottle back into place, and they resume walking. "The blood elves are a subtler people than most, so be prepared for them to try to draw you out more deviously than most. They'll get you comfortable and probably try to get you drunk--or actually, they'll more likely ply you with whatever it is they all smoke--and then try to start you talking."

Anduin blinks. "And you think I'll be susceptible to that?"

His father looks at him blankly. "Why wouldn't you be?"

Anduin shrugs, a bit disappointed in this evaluation. "You realize people have been trying to do that to me since shortly after I learned to talk. Though the plying began with toys rather than drink."

When he glances sideways, he sees half in shadow that his father's neutral expression has turned furious, and Anduin watches his father's jaw clench as his teeth grind. The shift into rage lasts only a few seconds. but even after Varian relaxes his face with an effort, Anduin's eyes remain glued to him in the flickering light.

When his father's face is back to normal, Anduin goes on. "I don't think they'll try anything so unscrupulous, though, do you? Elves are pretty farsighted. I could die of old age seventy years from now and Lor'themar will probably still be regent. If he's interested in being on good terms enough to have me there, he won't want to give an offense I might remember in the future."

Varian nods slowly. "Maybe. But maybe not. I think Lor'themar can be trusted, but I don't know about the magistry. Magisterium, whatever they call it, they may seek to manipulate you. Nine to ten odds they're going to treat you like a major guest of honor, and at formal affairs they do a series of toasts with a strong liquor you'll be obligated to drink. I'm not saying they'll definitely try to pump you for information, I'm just saying... be guarded."

"Whatever happens, I'll be careful," Anduin says simply.

His father nods, though he seems pensive. They walk for another minute in silence before Varian breaks into one of his abrupt smiles and says, "I know you can handle yourself."

Anduin looks at his father and smiles back, pleased by this praise. "Thanks."

"I want you to bring some of those anti-toxin potions to take with meals there. I'm going to send Wyll down to Pestle's to see about having a batch prepared, enough for two weeks."

Anduin raises his eyebrows dubiously. "Father, truthfully, I think you're being paranoid now." A scowl starts to come together on his father's face, and Anduin sighs and puts up a hand. "But all right, I don't see any harm in that. So long the vials are small so I can be discreet about it."

His father's face clears. "Good."

"But they better not be the really strong kind. I'm not going to take them if they give me stomach cramps," Anduin warns.

"I'll tell Wyll," his father promises.

His father halts again and pulls an undulatingly curving blue bottle out of a rack. Anduin can only tell the color when his father holds the torch close. The bottle has a screw top rather than a cork, and his father examines the seal around the lip of the bottle before he tucks the bottle under his arm and twists the cap off.

Anduin's nonplussed, watching. It's a question with an obvious answer, but he asks it anyway. "What are you doing?"

Ignoring the query, his father puts the blue glass mouth of the bottle to his lips without so much as sniffing the contents. "Hmm. Gin. It's not bad." His father offers him the bottle, and Anduin shakes his head no. "Just take a sip, for Light's sake," his father says with mild exasperation.

On the verge of refusing a second time and more forcefully, Anduin hesitates. His father has absolutely no reservations about drinking alone, and it's not like him to prod Anduin to join him in imbibing. Anduin frowns, but with that thought in mind, he obediently accepts the curving bottle and takes a swig, wincing as he does so. "Damn," he says hoarsely. His eyes water and his chest burns. "That's strong."

His father takes a deep breath. "You know about sex, Anduin?"

It's the last and possibly the most risible question Anduin would have expected, and he laughs awkwardly before he can stop himself. At least his father let him finish swallowing before asking it. "Yes," he says, amused and embarrassed both.

"Okay. Good. I just wanted to make absolutely sure before you go do this." His father sighs and takes another sip of the gin. "Bolvar?"

Anduin nods. "Talked to me. Yes. When I turned eleven. You kind of missed the window." Anduin intends no recrimination, and he immediately regrets his last sentence. His father's caught him off-guard, here, and he spoke off the cuff, and poorly. Silently Anduin reaches out for the bottle, and his father puts it in his hand. Anduin would have simply taken a mouthful and handed it back, but his father reaches back into the rack and twists open a second bottle.

"I figured. You were always closer to him," his father says. Anduin shifts uncomfortably, but there's no accusation in his father's voice. "I'm glad he was there for you when I wasn't."

Anduin consumes another, smaller sip of gin and swallows, and his chest heats again, gentler this time. He's glad of Bolvar too. "You're here for me now," he states, because that's the first response he can think of that's both truthful and comforting, and his father smiles at him wanly. "Also, books exist. I can read, you realize."

His father makes a dismissive gesture. "I was certain Bolvar... I wanted to make sure." His father seems thoughtful. "To Bolvar," his father says, and lifts his bottle. "Brother I never had. I still miss him."

Anduin raises his in turn. "To Bolvar," he echos. "And--me too."

His father lowers the second bottle after he takes another long drink, but casts only the merest glance at the printed label before looking Anduin in the eye. "There's something else you should know," his father says. "They're famously promiscuous in Silvermoon."

Anduin's eyes widen at this intimation, and he wants to laugh again but ultimately mostly keeps his composure, though he can't repress the bemused smile that plays around the corners of his lips.

"I'm aware," he says bluntly. "I mean, I've heard. That's not why I'm interested in visiting. Is that why you don't want me to go?"

"Not at all," Varian says, so easily and mildly that Anduin believes him. "I just don't want you to be surprised. They're not degenerates, but their society is old and old cultures often go hedonistic. They're far more public and less clandestine about bedroom matters than we are."

_Bedroom matters._

Anduin's mature enough not to object to having this conversation with his father, but he still finds it funny and more than a little awkward, and so he keeps strict control over the muscles of his face, which are dying to twitch, likely into the inappropriate laughter he's holding back. Despite maintaining a straight expression, he can't resist going for the joke. "So it's like Jaina and Kalec when they aren't fighting, only it's everyone and all the time there."

"Funny. Yes, public affection is part of it, but it goes well beyond that." Varian takes another sip.

"Do I want to know how you know this?"

His father gives him a look. "I've never been to Silvermoon City, nor would I want to."

"So I should expect to see canoodling down every formal garden path, is that what you're telling me?"

"Mathias reports they have public sex, orgies, many courtesans, and some kind of annual fertility festival that they're secretive about," Varian advises flatly, and he takes another long drink from the blue bottle.

Anduin stares at his father, his mood shifting in a few heartbeats from amusement to disbelief. "Did you send the SI:7 on a--on a pornographic fact-finding mission because I wanted to go see the Sunwell?"

"No, they already had a file going, I only had them pull it," Varian says, not interested in his son's incredulousness. "Forewarned is forearmed. I just wanted you to know what you're getting into, if you didn't already."

Anduin shakes his head, laughing openly, if briefly, because he can't hold it back anymore. "Well. Invitations to the orgies shall be summarily declined, and when I see shenanigans happening in the back pews of the cathedral, I'll try not to gawk."

"How you conduct yourself is your business. I know you'll make me proud," his father says, and he smiles in a serious sort of way. "You always do." He pauses, looking up and down the darkened aisles of racks and bottles. "I haven't been down here in years," his father admits. "Maybe we should ask Margot to choose a vintage."

Anduin rubs his hand over his mouth, but there's no hiding his now-irrepressible grin. "Maybe we should."

They carry the two open, mostly full bottles of gin up to the kitchen afterwards, set them down and welcome them to the cooks and servants.

* * *

The rest of the preparations go more or less smoothly. They have a brief disagreement about how many guards Anduin should bring, and finally compromise on a contingent of ten so that six can follow him around, two can guard his room, and two can rest, all in shifts. Then they argue about Wyll, who is significantly older and creakier than the last time Anduin brought him on a voyage. Anduin thinks either Wyll should be offered retirement in Stormwind or wherever he'd like to go, perhaps somewhere warm with nice beaches, or he should at least be given an assistant to do a bodyservant's heavy lifting. Varian thinks Wyll will probably want to live and die on the job. They finally consult Wyll on the matter, who draws himself up to his full height and says with dignity that he is perfectly fit to perform all his duties, but after further prodding he agrees to train a young assistant who can share in carrying the weightier luggage. In the end, everyone goes away satisfied.

Margot bustles in her full skirts into Varian's study with three sweet white wines in her arms for them to consider: a goblin-grown variety from Bogpaddle of sufficiently high quality to shock Robbie and with a price to match, a classic Menethil Harbor from a particularly fine and fruitful year, and one of the rarest, most precious vintages of Dustwallow Marsh, rare because the bountiful grape fields west and northwest of Theramore are no longer farmed and have fallen back into neglected, overgrown wilderness. "All are late harvests, all full bodied, all rich with botrytis spice," Margot says with enthusiasm, and if she knows a lot about wine, she obviously hasn't the first idea about diplomacy.

Anduin's eyes meet his father's in a moment of silent understanding. To bestow a host gift of wine from Dustwallow Marsh, given the destruction of Theramore, would be a terrible slap in the face to Jaina. Chances are excellent Jaina might even hear of the gift's provenance, a scrap of information that would usually be of no note or importance whatsoever, simply because it'd be sufficiently offensive to be talked about. But even if she never found out, it doesn't matter one whit.

"The Menethil Harbor," his father says decisively.

"You don't think they'd like the Bogpaddle better?" Anduin asks after Margot endorses his father's choice, bows and leaves them.

"Friends we could give anything. Since they're officially enemies, let's give them a vintage from an Alliance kingdom," his father says. "Blood elves, high elves, they're all wine snobs," he adds, putting his feet up on his desk and leaning back in his chair. "But that's a great wine. It should please them."

"So judgy," Anduin teases. His father is no longer the sot he used to be years prior, imbibing to manage any level of stress, but he's still a heavier drinker than Anduin would prefer. But Anduin's proud of his father for so drastically cutting back, so while he used to register outright disapproval, now he only jokes about his father's intake and standards or lack thereof. "Not everyone's like you, willing to drink prison wine fermented in a chamber pot and strained through a used stocking."

Guilty as charged, his father grins. Then his eyebrows draw together briefly, but the expression lasts only a second, leaving him still good-humored if disconcerted. "You said you were only a prisoner of the Horde for a few hours. How and why do you know any methods of brewing prison hooch?"

Anduin shrugs mysteriously.

His father lowers his feet and sits up in his chair, marginally more serious, perhaps even a bit concerned. "Son, I want an answer to that. I was a gladiatorial slave, I needed to learn these things. What's your excuse?"

Anduin smiles back sweetly, beatific. "Pandaria is a land of many secrets, Father."

His father rolls his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

Finding a high elven mage in Stormwind to portal him to Silvermoon is not difficult. Anduin leaves shortly after mid-day. The swirling blue portal opens at the pre-appointed time to an atrium with several formally robed elven attendants and a dozen guards standing back in a triangular formation, a blurry elf in blue waiting at their forefront.

Anduin hugs his father goodbye and takes a long last look, smiling, before he steps into the portal, leaving Stormwind behind.

The atrium in which he finds himself is as large as the biggest room in Stormwind's library, and the elves have allowed plenty of space for his entourage to come through the portal. The elf in the position of honor awaiting him is Halduron Brightwing, whom Anduin recognizes from a portrait in the endlessly informative wealth of SI:7 files. 

"Your Highness," Halduron says, his face amiable, and he bows briskly and a bit indifferently for a blood elf. The guards and attendants behind him bow as smoothly and simultaneously as if they've choreographed their timing. Like the elven guards and attendants, Halduron too is formally dressed, a man-sized swirl of blue and gold leather and mail in a sea of clanking and swishing red and gold. He's handsome, in the way all elves are handsome, tall and slim with fine features and smooth skin, his blond hair held back with a headband. His eyes glow a light green.

"Ranger-General Brightwing, I'm so pleased to meet you," Anduin says as his guards file through the portal behind him.

"Likewise. Please, call me Halduron, we'll likely be seeing a lot of one another while you're here, assuming you find me tolerable." His smile contains genuine warmth.

"I'd like that. Please call me Anduin."

"I would be honored," Halduron says carelessly, and though he doesn't truly sound as though he feels honored, his manner is genial. "Please, allow me to show you to your rooms."

"Thank you."

Halduron leads him out of the atrium into a street bright with sunshine, lined with well-maintained cobblestones made from an almost uniformly golden-beige granite. "Behold, the Court of the Sun," Halduron says, gesturing expansively with one hand. 

Anduin looks out and up to a radiantly bright day, lit more dazzlingly than the sunniest day in the open meadows of Elwynn Forest, white sunshine glinting off towers taller than the grandest spires of Stormwind, topped with curving golden wings. Phoenix wings, perhaps. All looks built in lush white-beige stone, and the high arches and billowing draperies of crimson silk are not faded or bleached by the shining daylight.

"It's so beautiful," he says, meaning every word. The sun has never seemed quite so overhead. "It's... it's like it's directly beneath the sun here." Yet the air is not stiflingly hot, only delightfully warm, a perfect day of spring.

Halduron nods agreement. "I envy you seeing it for the first time," he says placidly. "Come, Sunfury Spire is this way," he says, directing Anduin left. Halduron walks with a long, self-assured stride he does not shorten for Anduin, and Anduin hastens at his side, feeling the eyes on him as they lead the contingent of servants and city guards.

They pass numerous minarets and townhouses and approach a connected set of enormous stone towers that dwarf all those around them, spiraling far up into the sky. Walking through a double line of guards, they enter into a hall draped in scarlet and gold tapestries, with elves in all manner of dress milling about. Halduron heads to the foot of one of three grand, winding ramps going up. "Tell me, does your leg trouble you?" Halduron asks, glancing at him.

Anduin raises his eyebrows; it seems a rather personal question, or at least indicates they have their fair share of intelligence on him. "No, it's healed all the way, thank you."

"I ask because we had a thought to give you quarters high up in the Spire," Halduron says, pausing now with one hand on a railing. "It's just this one ramp up to an orb you can use to go the rest of the way, but if you'd rather not have the extra exertion..."

"Oh, no, that sounds fine," Anduin says. "I'm fully recovered."

"Excellent. You'll be glad of that, because the view is spectacular," Halduron tells him. 

"I'm glad of it for many reasons," Anduin says with a smile.

Halduron leads him up the leftmost ramp, his step light, to a curtained alcove with nine slowly rotating, glowing red orbs in an circle. Halduron points to the seventh orb, takes Anduin's gloved hand in his mail gauntlet, and lays it on one of the curving cylindrical bars extending from the orb. Anduin closes his fingers, feels the familiar tugging sensation behind his navel, and is instantly transported elsewhere--upstairs, he supposes, though he could be in Kalimdor now for all he knows. But Halduron appears beside him, and they're in a hallway of similar decor with numerous closed double doors. Five pairs of elven guards line each side of the hallway, their backs to the wall. He's surprised by the number of guards, in truth. The corridor is wide as though to accommodate the sheer quantity of bodies.

"Lor'themar's apartments are two floors up. Rommath's offices are in this tower too," Halduron says as they walk down the hall. "Though you won't see him wandering around."

"He teleports everywhere?" Anduin guesses, thinking of Jaina.

Halduron nods. "Well, not everywhere," he amends. "But most places. Rommath lives clear across the city, in the Royal Exchange."

"Do you live here?"

"I have rooms in the other tower, yes," Halduron tells him. "But I pretend not to."

Anduin gives him a questioning look.

"I like to believe I dwell in Eversong on my family's estate." Halduron smiles at him, his green eyes sparkling under the glow. Halduron has an animated face when he speaks. "But it's an indulgent dream, nothing more. I haven't been out there in months now, in truth."

"It's hard to be away from where you want to be," Anduin says.

"So it is," Halduron agrees. "Is there somewhere you pine for?"

"Pandaria became very special to me while I was there," Anduin says. "But I was glad to return to Stormwind, too."

"I heard you were our prisoner in the Jade Forest for a night," Halduron comments, looking at him for a reaction, and just like that the mundane exchange of pleasantries takes a darker turn. "It must not have been too bad if your memories are fond." 

There's something gallant about Halduron, Anduin thinks, and something fun and carefree, but also something careless, perhaps even reckless. It gives Anduin pause... but only for the split second it takes him to decide how to respond.

"Oh, I was," Anduin says lightly. "It wasn't great, I was knocked out, then recognized and threatened with decapitation." He'd been captured by a masked undead woman--Kiryn, the hozen had called her. Hard to see in the gathering darkness, her voice had been sweet yet raspy. An orc woman had held him at gunpoint with an enormous rifle, and he'd long watched her finger on the trigger, half expecting to be shot or blown up by accident, for anything of goblin-make is automatically two extra levels of unsafe. He'd been afraid to use the Light to heal his head where she knocked him out, for Light at his fingertips could too easily have been taken for resistance or the intention to fight, and he didn't want to be beaten or killed. The hit to the back of his head had left him dizzy for hours, and he'd lost his balance and fallen twice during the time they'd had him standing around.

Then he'd come face to face with General Nazgrim.

In truth, he's never even been sure why he was made a captive in the first place rather than killed outright. The Horde personnel hadn't a prison or makeshift cage or even chains on hand to hold him, so they obviously didn't come with the intention of taking prisoners of war. He wonders if Kiryn showed him mercy because of his age, or because he was alone in the wilderness, or perhaps for some reason all her own, something he might be incapable of even guessing at. The most obvious explanation was that they planned to interrogate him, but then no one had bothered. And he wasn't taken alive for ransom from his father, because none of the Horde until Nazgrim seemed to know who he was.

All in all, his capture hadn't been a laughing matter of any kind, but better to speak nonchalantly of a grisly predicament than let on that Halduron has flustered him by so casually making reference to it.

"But your organization left a great deal to be desired, so in the end I pretty much just walked away. So still good memories," Anduin finishes. He'd half-run, half-stumbled through the forest, head continuing to spin at times from the hit to his skull, praying to heal the injury as he went.

Laughing, Halduron gestures to one of the attendants, who goes before them and unlocks a set of double doors with a large brass key. She passes the key to Halduron, who takes it and tosses it up high in the air. The key returns as smoothly to his hand as though the thing's ensorcelled, and without warning he tosses it to Anduin, who's caught off guard but fumbles and manages to catch the piece of cool metal against his sash.

"Your servants and your guards will be across the hall," Halduron says cheerfully, pointing to two other pairs of doors. "There's a rope, you can ring for them as you need." Halduron throws open the newly unlocked set of double doors, revealing a lavish set of rooms, and he strides in, leaving Anduin to follow.

All inside is crimson and white and gold. Instead of tapestries or simple stone, the walls are covered floor to ceiling in crimson velvet, lightened with white curtains and mosaics every few feet. The doorways and window frames and panel frames are gold. The curliqued moldings lining the domed ceiling are likewise gilded. His father had suggested the sin'dorei a subtle people, but the decor in their city, Anduin thinks, is anything but.

Wyll and his new assistant place Anduin's bags down beside a table, and one of the attendant elves leads them away. The captain of Anduin's guards, a woman named Miller, gives some silent direction, and three of Anduin's guards follow her and Wyll, and the rest remain behind to ensure his safety.

"The drapes, if you would," Halduron says, and each of the three remaining attendants goes to a separate area of the sitting room. They pull the curtains back simultaneously, ceremoniously uncovering an aerial panorama of the city below. Anduin goes to one set of windows. The day is bright and clear from up here too, and acres of formal gardens lie to either side of the paved streets of the Court of the Sun. The whole of the city seems to lie beneath him, and the people on the plaza far below look tiny.

"You can see all the way to Farstrider's Square," Halduron tells him, suddenly near his ear, and Anduin's momentarily taken aback by how silently he moves, even dressed in mail with its usual telltale clinks and shuffling sounds. It's like having an agent of the SI:7 around. "That's what that is down there. The smoke rising is from the blacksmiths' forge. And from the bedchamber, you can see the city walls and the sea."

"It's beautiful." Looking around the room again Anduin offers, "I like the colors. They're so vivid."

Halduron grins like he's made of mirth. "The former ambassador from the Undercity used to live in this suite, and he was completely senile," Halduron tells him, looking around as if he's proud of the apartment. "So we redid the rooms, with the parlor here all white and gold and scarlet, and you'll see the bedchamber is pink and yellow and orange, made to look like fire, and there's a phoenix painted on the wall and so on. All in hopes the ambassador would remember what city he was in. While it seemed like a good idea at the time and a number of people were quite enthusiastic about the project, as a strategy, it sadly failed."

Anduin can't tell how serious Halduron is. "And were you one of these enthusiastic redecorators?"

"Could be," Halduron says, winking at Anduin without wrinkling a single line of his handsome face. "Everything was remodeled and replaced after he left. The furniture was chopped up for kindling, and the carpet and drapes and bedclothes were initially turned into stable bedding for the Spire's hawkstriders, but hawkstriders don't like the scent of death any better than the next creature, so it was all a wash, we torched the lot. But we decided to keep the color schemes in the ambassador's honor." Halduron runs a hand over the gilded chair rail and smiles at him.

"You're pulling my leg," Anduin says half-accusingly.

Halduron shakes his head vigorously, proclaiming his innocence, and his long blond hair swishes back and forth. "No! No, I speak the truth. Ambassador Notley. I could live ten thousand years and never forget him." Halduron picks up a hearthstone lying on a table and hands it to him. "Do you know how to use this?"

Anduin accepts the polished white stone with a nod. "I do."

"It will bring you to the parlor here," Halduron says, and with a gesture he beckons Anduin deeper inside the suite.

Anduin glances through another open door on the way to see a water closet with not only a basin for washing up, but also a small, white and gold marble pool sunken into the floor, an oval with steps descending down. Sadly, it's empty of water.

Halduron's led him into the bedchamber, he sees, and the curtain has fallen closed behind them. Surrounding the bed is a gauzy fuchsia canopy gathered by silken ties. The duvet and pillows are orange and yellow silk, and the ceiling is all draping, interwoven tapestries in the same colors. Three fine cords woven two inches thick hang down behind the transparent bedcurtains.

"The white pull will call your own servants," Halduron says, pointing towards the bed. "The orange one will summon one of our servants, should you want food or drink or a bath." Halduron makes no mention of the third, bright yellow cord or its use. "They can turn the chandeliers brighter or darker for you, or you can use the candles and sconces if you're more comfortable with that, your choice. They've been told in no uncertain terms to get you whatever you want, so personally, I think you should ask them for world peace and see what happens."

Anduin smiles as he goes to the tall doors to the balcony, fiddling with the lock before managing to open the doors. "That's a bigger ask than I'd usually make of a servant." Halduron spoke truly; the balcony overlooks the edge of the city, its towering white-beige wall accented with red and gold, and the glassy blue-green expanse of the sea beyond. On the horizon, the island that can only be Quel'Danas is visible with its own high, faraway walls and towers.

"I'm sure that's true," Halduron says, following him as he steps out onto the balcony. "But we take pride in spoiling our guests here."

When Halduron comes to his side and lowers his voice, Anduin realizes that they're truly alone on the balcony; his guards haven't followed past the curtain into the bedchamber. "Lor'themar's going to pass you around amongst us while you're here, but between you and me, you should stick with me and Lor'themar as much as possible," Halduron tells him, studying his face before looking out over the sea. "The alternative is Grand Magister Rommath. Lor'themar is endlessly preoccupied with affairs of state, and no one can do all he does. Whereas I can temporarily delegate most of my responsibilities. Rommath can too, but there's a non-zero percent chance his underlings will burn the city down around our ears. And even worse, you'll be stuck spending time with him."

Anduin smiles. Every third word out of Halduron's mouth seems to be a jest. "Are you afraid the grand magister will bore me, or you're saying he's fearsome?"

"Perhaps not fearsome to someone who willingly spent hours in the company of Garrosh Hellscream, but why find out?" Halduron says.

Anduin smiles again. "Garrosh wasn't so bad as all that."

Halduron looks thoughtful, as if he's considering saying more. "I just don't want you to go in blind," Halduron says finally, sounding a more cheerful echo of Anduin's father. "He wasn't thrilled to have you invited, let's say that, and I suspect you'll find almost as little pleasure in his company as he will in yours. I want you to have a nice time here, and avoiding him as much as possible is your safest bet."

Halduron has an open face, and he says it all so genuinely that Anduin takes him at his word, assuming for the moment he's not being drawn into some strange political game. "Does the grand magister dislike humans?" Anduin's not particularly worried by the prospect; the Tavern was a neutral meeting place for all Azeroth's races, which meant plenty of those of Horde races who loathed humans or wanted him dead because of his parentage. He can be pragmatic about being hated on principle and on sight.

"I don't even think he likes elves," Halduron says casually. "Rommath has no special love for anyone. But who knows. I understand everyone likes you."

Is that going to precede his reputation forever, Anduin wonders. Counseled Garrosh Hellscream during his trial, oh yes, also a prince of Stormwind?

"Well, I've never met the grand magister, and it sounds like it'll be interesting, but I'm delighted to have you as a guide at least some of the time," Anduin says.

Halduron smiles again; he smiles easily. "If you'd ridden or flown here, I'd leave you to wash up and take some refreshment," he says pleasantly, and leads Anduin back out to the bedchamber, locking the balcony doors behind them. "I still could, if you feel weary or dusty or hungry. But I know Lor'themar looks forward to seeing you as soon as you're ready."

"Traveling by portal's not all that tiring," Anduin says. "I'd be pleased to meet with Lord Theron whenever he has time for me."

* * *

Lor'themar Theron's office is a suite of rooms, Anduin sees, a sitting room and an official-looking room beyond, and secondary rooms beyond that, and Lor'themar is sitting behind the most cluttered desk Anduin has ever seen. The sin'dorei bureaucracy is evidently real, for neat piles of parchments and scrolls nearly obscure Lor'themar's face. Sitting in in front of the desk is an elf with long, dark hair. When Lor'themar looks past the elf up at Anduin and Halduron, the dark-haired elf turns his head.

Lor'themar doesn't make Anduin come all the way forward, but rather rises and comes out from behind his desk, crossing the room to him, wearing a cordial smile. Lor'themar is much as Anduin remembers from seeing him from afar at Garrosh's trial. Even among his people Lor'themar must once have been exceptionally handsome. At a glance it's clear his features were once refined and lovely. But as war has wrought devastation on so many others, so too have the sin'dorei campaigns ravaged Lor'themar. A long, uneven scar cleaves his forehead and one cheek, a white line thick in parts and thinner in others, and the red-fading-into-black eyepatch right smack in the middle of it leaves his face decisively the face of a warrior, a veteran of a hundred or a thousand battles. The rugged reality of the scar and the asymmetry of the eyepatch weigh against the ethereal elven beauty in him, leaving Lor'themar attractive rather than beautiful in the balance. Yet his good eye is wide and curious, warm and welcoming. The platinum blond hair hanging free of his high ponytail falls nearly to his waist.

Like Halduron, Lor'themar is formally dressed, but where Halduron as ranger-general wears mail, Lor'themar is outfitted in red silk--a shirt with entwining crimson and blood-red stripes with billowing sleeves, belted at the waist. His breeches are the same striped red silk, and his black leather boots look supple enough to touch. The oddly fashionable black and red ombre eyepatch matches his ensemble.

In Lor'themar's wake follows Grand Magister Rommath in scarlet and silver robes sewn of soft, gleaming mageweave, and only the cast of his eyes and the way he leans slightly on his staff suggest he's anything other than young. His skin is smooth, his bearing erect, and his face strikingly handsome, a perfect portrait of elven loveliness marred solely by his irritable expression.

"Your Highness, Prince Anduin Wrynn, welcome to Quel'Thalas and to Silvermoon City." Lor'themar presses his palms together in greeting as he walks over. Anduin takes this gesture as a possible tell to his stay in Pandaria; Anduin knows he was long on the continent, almost as long as Anduin himself, and according to SI:7 intelligence, it sounds as though his time was divided equally in battling the forces of the Thunder King, seeking out mogu artifacts, and infuriating Jaina. When Lor'themar reaches Anduin he crosses his right arm in front of his waist as he bows, a much more formal and elegant movement than Halduron had executed. Every inch of him is debonair. "It is so good to see you again. How do you do?"

Anduin bows in the human fashion, arms at his sides, to the appropriate distance--though Anduin was born a prince and Lor'themar is a steward, Lor'themar is the absolute ruler of his people, and so Anduin bows to an equal. "Lord Regent Theron, I'm delighted to see you as well, and to be here. I'm fine, thank you. And yourself?"

"Excellent, thank you. And how is your father, well I hope?" Lor'themar says, and these are the boring, safe, obligatory questions. Anduin doesn't enjoy these conversations, but he is used to the ritual give and take of formal small talk. Venturing anywhere away from home invites it. He eyes the slope of Lor'themar's shoulders. In Garrosh's throne room, and at his trial in Kun-Lai, Anduin never got even remotely this near to Lor'themar, and the regent lord's size comes as a bit of a surprise. Lor'themar is tall for an elf and up close, more muscular than Anduin had realized from a twenty foot distance.

"Yes, he's very well, thank you for asking."

"And this is Grand Magister Rommath," Lor'themar says, and Rommath manages a curt bow for him, stone-faced. "Rommath was just shaming me for allowing you to see this mess," Lor'themar says, waving in the direction of his desk. The gesture is regal but the words are spoken lightly, almost as though he's teasing Rommath.

"I was done," Rommath says, humorless and icy.

"Believe it or not, Lor'themar cleared it off for you," Halduron says merrily.

"If you'd like, I thought we might take a walk through the Court of the Sun and discuss your visit," Lor'themar suggests.

"Of course, I'd like that," Anduin says.

Lor'themar beckons Anduin to walk beside him, and Rommath and Halduron walk directly behind them as they leave the Spire and walk down the street. They're trailed by a regiment of guards: twelve elves, six humans, and two arcane guardians.

Rommath, it seems to Anduin, is the sharpest of the trio in more ways than one, and his veneer of courtesy is parchment-thin. Every minute Anduin's not looking back at Rommath he feels the grand magister's eyes on him. The evaluation is blatant, so much so that Anduin wonders if Rommath's deemed him not worth the trouble of subtlety. Anduin doesn't mind, if so. All his life he's been underestimated due to his youth, and it's an advantage his enemies and would-be manipulators never realize they're offering him.

Or perhaps Rommath is only trying to make him uncomfortable. Oddly, though, Rommath doesn't. Anduin only feels as though he's being thoroughly assessed, every line of his body, every expression, every inch of his face when his head is turned towards Lor'themar. And after a time, Rommath seems to lose interest and thereafter, barely looks at him at all.

"I thought perhaps the Sunwell on Thursday," Lor'themar says, glancing at him. "So if you see it and decide you want to remain on Quel'Danas for the rest of your time here, you'll have almost a week and a half to spend there."

"That's very kind of you."

"Do you prefer to bathe in the mornings or evenings?"

Anduin thinks about it for a moment. "Mornings, I think."

"Very good. Rommath will escort you to the bathhouse."

Anduin glances over and behind Lor'themar to Rommath and nods politely, for of course it's too late to change his answer. Rommath bows his head in answer, but his look is distant. Anduin would have to turn around more fully to meet Halduron's eyes, and he's not sure he wants to just then.

"Unless you'd prefer to bathe alone in your quarters?" Lor'themar checks.

"If the bathhouse is the norm, that will be fine," Anduin says pleasantly, biting his tongue.

Lor'themar nods and continues. "Then Halduron will be with you after that, or I will. One of the three of us will endeavor to stay with you at all times. Humans are not a common sight in Silvermoon, and I fear perhaps not a welcome one, not to some."

Indeed, Anduin has noticed not all the looks he's getting are warm or friendly. Some are cold, suspicious, contemptuous or outright hostile. He's also noticing that considering the incredible scale of the Court of the Sun, the density of elves walking around is low. He'd known Silvermoon was sparsely populated relative to the high elves' old numbers, but to visibly see the evidence of the death toll in the city's emptiness is shocking and sad.

Without either of them saying where they're going, he and Lor'themar drop off Rommath and Halduron at the entrance to another building. Halduron bows briefly to the both of them as he takes his leave, and Rommath lowers his head and shoulders, though to Lor'themar rather than to him, Anduin thinks.

"You'll stay with me for now," Lor'themar says, and as he and Anduin keep walking, Anduin feels conscious again of Lor'themar's size. Lor'themar's chest is broad for an elf, his waist trim beneath the belted silk, and he's statuesque and somehow intimidatingly masculine with his half-handsome features. Lor'themar seems warm but businesslike, self-deprecating yet proud, and entirely in control of the situation around him. Anduin realizes his heart is beating a little faster as he looks. Not that he would ever act on _that_ in a million years.

"I hope Silvermoon pleases you," Lor'themar says, glancing at him.

"Oh, I love it already," he says, and Lor'themar smiles at him. "I like Halduron, he's very easygoing, and funny."

Lor'themar's smile deepens until it touches his single eye, crinkling the folds of skin along the corner. "You are in excellent company there. Most everyone likes Halduron."

Anduin looks up at the buildings as they walk, because Silvermoon's shorter towers seem to dwarf Stormwind's highest. "I can't believe how high you can build," he says.

"We are not bound by the constraints of scaffolding and hammer, it's true," Lor'themar answers. "Though sweat and blood do go into our architecture here, for anything of great size a team of magisters collaborates on the construction."

Lor'themar is pleasant and gracious, and confidence ripples through his every movement and gesture, but there's something remote about him, Anduin thinks, or something sad. He smiles often, courteously, but his smiles never last more than a moment or two.

Anduin's eyes shift to the floating planters up at the height of the balconies. The blood elves are prodigious with their use of magic. The lanterns along the sides of the road bob up and down, suspended midair by nothing visible. He runs his hand over a long railing and notes that even the teardrop, jeweled decorations on the bannister hover a couple of inches above the scarlet-painted wood. Anduin knows any work of magic requires studious effort, and the arcane expense strikes him as astonishingly, bizarrely wasteful, but clearly decorative magic everywhere is standard practice for the sin'dorei, and it's hardly his place to question their cultural norms.

A cat darts out of the shadow of a townhouse and suddenly winds around Anduin's shins. "Hi," he says, feeling only slightly silly to be talking to a stray cat. He's seen a dozen cats already at least. "So many cats wandering around," he says to Lor'themar. "I'm amazed you have any birds left in the city." 

Anduin combs the cat's fur with his fingers. It's more scruffy-looking than most he's seen so far, with matted fur on its hindquarters. Anduin leans down to stroke the animal, and he allows it to sniff his hand.

"This one badly needs a brushing," Lor'themar says, stopping and crouching to regard the creature, and he rummages in a pocket and pulls out a small bag. Dipping his hand inside, he withdraws a small square of something and tosses it to the cat, who abandons Anduin to run after the thrown nibble. "Most of them are a bit more cared for by someone or other." Observing the interest on Anduin's face, perhaps, he asks: "Would you like to feed her?"

"Yes," he says, accepting the bag Lor'themar hands him and peering inside. "I definitely would." The contents seem to be tiny baked morsels of--something. Pulling one out, Anduin lets the cat come take the tidbit from his fingers. "I'll brush it too, if you have a brush," Anduin says flippantly, and it's not an especially good joke, but the regent lord chuckles anyway.

"Have you ever owned a cat, Prince Anduin?"

"Please, just Anduin," he urges.

Lor'themar smiles faintly. "If you'll do me the same honor and call me Lor'themar."

Anduin nods as the cat licks at his fingers. The cats in Stormwind sometimes do the same, and one of the cooks told him once it's because they like the salt in human sweat. "Lor'themar, then." He likes the sound on his tongue. "You have a beautiful name," he dares.

"I thank you for saying so," Lor'themar says, that same smile fluttering over his lips.

Anduin resumes the previous thread of conversation. "There are cats around the stables at home, and cats that hang around outside the kitchens, but I've never had a pet of my own. But I like animals." He straightens when Lor'themar stands, and they keep walking. Anduin passes back the little sack.

"You do seem the type," Lor'themar says, as if this amuses him.

Anduin looks at Lor'themar questioningly, not sure whether he's being gently teased or mocked.

Lor'themar smiles again. "I gather you're the sort to collect the strays no one else wants to touch, the mangy ones with tangled fur, the ones that may bite." He glances sidelong at Anduin, who gets the distinct feeling he's not picking up whatever Lor'themar is laying down here. Anduin lifts an eyebrow, his face blank, and the regent lord spells it out for him. "I was thinking of our former warchief," Lor'themar clarifies.

"Oh." Anduin's taken aback, because it seems a strange way to bring up Garrosh. "Garrosh was not an animal," Anduin says finally, voice firm.

"But aren't we all animals?" Lor'themar asks rhetorically, a verbal dodge if Anduin has ever heard one. "Still, many would count you a charitable person for saying so." Aiming precisely, he tosses another square treat, and the cat chases after it.

Without anything explicitly being said on the topic, Anduin's getting the feeling Lor'themar wanted to see Garrosh executed.

Anduin glances back at the feline that's a ways behind them now. "That cat didn't have mange, did it? I'd like to heal it if it did."

Lor'themar looks sideways, studying him with his single eye, and Anduin wonders if Lor'themar is judging his intellect and finding it unsatisfactory. Anduin would like to think he's reasonably quick-witted, and not unskilled at deciphering others' words to uncover their deeper meanings, but in this case the commentary was simply too subtle for him. He's not sure why Lor'themar would want to talk about Garrosh, anyway.

"No, I wasn't being literal about the mange," Lor'themar says. "Hyperbole only. Though as you said, a good brushing wouldn't hurt."

"How many cats do you have in the city?"

"Oh, thousands. Suffice to say we do not have a mouse or rat problem. They're good pets, if you have an ego that can take being disregarded."

Anduin looks at the architecture as they walk. The sunlight catches the stained glass windows in nearly every building they pass. Stormwind has its fair share of stained glass art and windows, but stained glass seems to be everywhere he looks in Silvermoon.

"So what do you like to do?" Lor'themar asks him.

"With my time?"

Lor'themar nods. A faint breeze blows his hair. The sight is distracting, but Anduin thinks the question over. "I visit the Cathedral often, to attend services and to heal the sick and the injured, and I spend a lot of time at court with my father."

Lor'themar studies him again. "Are those the things you like to do, or simply the things you do?"

Anduin laughs slightly, kicking a stray pebble ahead of them on the cobblestones. Silvermoon's streets are nearly pristine--the flowers and greenery to the sides are neatly in their beds, and the paving stones are cleaner than seems possible, clear of all but the smallest debris. Anduin thinks of Stormwind's streets as normal, dirty the way streets must be expected to be dirty, but Silvermoon's near-perfection puts them to shame even as he has the sense there's something not quite right about the thoroughfares of a city being so unnaturally unsullied. "Are you asking whether I like my life?"

"Not in so many words, but I suppose I am," Lor'themar says.

"Well... it's a bit of both, I suppose. I do enjoy my father's company. I like to go new places, and I like to explore. Here--well, I'd love to experience your city. I'm open to almost anything you'd like to do with me." This slip of the tongue could be interpreted suggestively, but thankfully Lor'themar has no reaction. "And of course I want very much to see the Sunwell."

"Well, let me start by showing you our center of worship within Silvermoon." Lor'themar points to a vast building ahead of them. "The Hall of Mirrored Light, in your tongue," Lor'themar says. "The Sunwell is the spiritual heart of our nation, but the priests hold devotionals every morning and evening here for those in the city. Perhaps you would like to attend a service?"

"I'd like that very much."

"I do not know how you worship the Light in Stormwind, but I should be surprised if your rituals vary greatly from those here," Lor'themar says.

Anduin can hear, from within the building, voices raised in song. He places the lilting melody almost immediately; it's 'The Light's Eternal Blessings,' a hymn he knows by heart, and the congregation or the choir, he's not sure which, is singing the song in Common as he knows it. He slows as they pass the side of the structure, looking up at the long stained glass windows of the curving hall, far above. Every panel shines vibrantly with the sunlight, and the designs are intricate, with many elves depicted. He shades his eyes to see better. "Do these tell a story?"

"Mm, you are perceptive, yes." Lor'themar seems pleased. He backtracks several steps, light on his feet, and points. "A story of our people, fifty scenes from history. Not in chronological order, however. This is Dath'remar Sunstrider, and the Highborne mastering the arcane. Here, the founding of the kingdom of Quel'Thalas. The creation of the Sunwell. That one depicts the formation of the Quel'dorei alliance with the men of Arathor. See the humans they train as magi? In this one, we bring the Amani to their knees. Our heroes are interspersed. In front you'll see a large portrait of Dath'Remar and one of Anasterian Sunstrider rendered opposite him." Lor'themar resumes walking, slower now, pointing back and forth. "That is Grand Magister Belo'vir with the Stones he created, shown protecting the city. High Priest Vandellor. The sets of seven figures are the Convocation of Silvermoon, shown at different times. On the other side are more battle scenes from the Troll Wars, King Anasterian in battle and at rule in court, the cleansing of the Sunwell, the sin'dorei allying with the Horde."

Anduin wonders if he'd see Velen in the Sunwell window. "Is Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider pictured?"

Lor'themar glances at him. "No. He was, and prominently so, but those panes were taken down. Perhaps a generation from now, the artisans might show his demise."

Anduin frowns, surprised and dismayed. "You mean they might swap out one of these windows?"

Lor'themar nods. "They're replaced often."

"It seems a shame to replace any of these, ever. They're incredible," Anduin says sincerely.

"There were statues of Kael as well," Lor'themar says. "Nearly all demolished or removed. Some defaced." He appears to think on the subject for a moment. "If you've an interest, we can go visit the vault where the old windows are kept. There are many." There's a smile in his voice now. "The stained glass artisans need keep themselves busy."

"I'd like that. They make me wish I knew your people's history better." Lor'themar does not point himself out in the panes of historical illumination, but Anduin recognizes a few representations of the regent lord by his hair, his blood-red suit of plate accented with black and gold, and the sword he holds, same as Anduin had seen in Orgrimmar's throne room. As they stroll along, Anduin shades his eyes to gaze up at the colored glass works of art. "Whose head is being held up in that one?"

Lor'themar's voice becomes strained just for a syllable, but when Anduin glances at him, his posture has changed too, tightened and tensed. "Dar'Khan Drathir. A traitor to Quel'Thalas. It depicts his fall."

Anduin doesn't know why this name stiffens Lor'themar's broad shoulders in a way the infamous Kael'thas Sunstrider's doesn't, and he wants to ask about another window that shows high elves and more normal-looking humans around a table, but the change in Lor'themar's manner stops him. He's blundered, though, that much is clear. He's just not certain how.

But Lor'themar's face softens as they continue to walk, and his taut shoulders relax. "Our heroes, alliances, and victories are pictured, generally. Kael'thas was both hero and then villain for us. His rise was the fulfillment of a promise, his betrayal was grievous, and so his end was victory and loss both. No one wants the reminder."

"It wasn't my intention to remind you of an unhappy time," Anduin says earnestly, turning his upper half slightly for this not-quite-apology.

"Oh, you didn't," Lor'themar replies, sounding amused, and he says it so lightly and believably, Anduin can almost believe he imagined the moment of tension that visibly swept his host. "I'm saying only--though the day was won in the end, what happened with Kael was part a defeat, and defeats are more often saved for the history books than placed on display for the world."

One of Lor'themar's guards goes before them, swinging open the double doors to the massive building so they can enter.

The light that pours forth makes it immediately obvious why the Hall of Mirrored Lights has its name.

Anduin has to put a hand in front of his eyes before he can even begin to see inside. Vast as any of the sin'dorei architecture, the hall's appearance is made even more enormous by the fact that every inch of the interior save for the massive stained glass windows above is covered in mirrors. Back-to-back mirrors, floor-to-ceiling, window-to-window, are fitted together with no gaps. With racks and shelves of candles forming small shrines here and there, chandeliers hanging every twenty feet or so along the ceiling, and a small font of yellow light floating ten feet up in the center of the room, and the mirrors reflecting all of it from every direction, the hall is a blaze of light. The mirrors somehow emphasize and exaggerate, even, rather than merely reflecting. As he takes in the sight Anduin's eyes adjust somewhat, his pupils probably contracted to nothing, but he's still forced to squint and shield his eyes.

"Watch your step," Lor'themar says. Anduin takes a step inside and lurches, staggering and almost falling, for the floor too is a shining mirror reflecting the ceiling far above and the vast space of the room, and when he steps forward into the hall the visual is like he's stepping into a chasm, about to plunge down. As though anticipating his abrupt loss of balance, Lor'themar grasps Anduin's elbow, steadying him.

Anduin laughs uneasily, embarrassed as he gets his bearings and rights himself. "You did warn me."

"I could have warned you twice, it wouldn't have helped," Lor'themar says. "It's not you, I promise. Newcomers get disoriented."

Anduin doesn't much care for this hall. Being in the Cathedral of Light at home is a source of comfort; he feels little of that here.

"I'd love to attend a service here," he says to Lor'themar, whose handsome features are currently consumed and erased by sunspots, "but I'm rather afraid to go blind." Anduin instantly regrets these words, for it had slipped his mind that Lor'themar is missing an eye, but Lor'themar laughs and rummages in his pocket, producing a pair of glasses with dark-tinted lenses and handing them to him.

"Thank you," Anduin says. He puts them on and the world turns to blessedly cool dimness, back into a darkened clarity. "Are these yours? Don't you need them?"

"No, I brought them for you. Your eyes are different from ours," Lor'themar says. "Less able to tolerate the intense luminescence. But before we go..." He signals an approaching acolyte and leans forward to murmur to her. The girl's eyes slide to Anduin and she nods at Lor'themar before hurrying off.

An elven man with short white hair and particularly long, broad eyebrows strides over to them. Anduin hasn't ever seen an ugly blood elf, but this elf perhaps comes the closest. His nose and eyes are sharp, and his lips have a bulky, squished look. When he sees Anduin, he presses his lips together.

Lor'themar makes quiet introductions. "Prince Anduin, Aldrae Mornember, one of our esteemed priests. Aldrae, Prince Anduin Wrynn, our honored visitor and also a priest of the Light. I wish to show him every courtesy while he's here."

Aldrae doesn't look particularly happy, but he bows and smiles as benevolently as his thinned-out mouth will allow. Many elves, Anduin thinks, many elves are not pleased to have him here. "Would you care to grace us with a sermon during your visit, your Highness?"

Anduin has not been ordained; he is a lay priest, only, because it's not as though he can dedicate his life where the church would dictate. Perhaps they would allow him to preach here on account of being a prince, but to take advantage of that would be incredibly inappropriate, and he has no real desire to give a sermon, either, for that matter. "Oh no, thank you. I would much prefer to hear yours," he answers, simple and politic.

"Don't worry," Lor'themar tells him after they leave the blindingly mirrored hall. "The hall here is a visually impressive space, but a pale imitation of the Sunwell, made for the sake of convenience only. You'll like the real thing much better."

Anduin removes the dark glasses and hands them back to Lor'themar, dismayed. "Am I that transparent?"

"Not at all," Lor'themar says with a little smirk, tucking them away. "But you're not the first human ever to visit Silvermoon."

* * *

They sit down to dinner that night to a banquet of many courses. "A feast to welcome you," Lor'themar tells him.

"You honor me," Anduin says formally.

"Really, it's little to do with you, Anduin, we seize on any excuse for a celebration," Halduron says. Halduron has changed into more casual clothing--formal, still, but lavender linen and gray silk instead of the ceremonial and ornate leather and mail.

"I'm so pleased to be a justification, then," Anduin says, and Halduron laughs and nudges him in the side with an unusually sharp and pointy elbow.

The hall is enormous and full of splendor. Long, gently curving tables are laid out in horseshoe shapes and covered with draping damask tablecloths. Where Stormwind has high-backed carved wooden chairs set with cushions for formal dining occasions, the elves have plush, well-padded settees, some single, some loveseat-style, wide enough for two. Anduin sits between Lor'themar and Halduron, and Rommath sits on Lor'themar's other side.

Servants move around the room in abundance, pouring small glasses of a viscous, pale apertif into toasting flutes set before each diner.

Anduin discreetly fingers the glass vial of the multi-toxin antidote he has on him, palming it with his hand in his pocket and uncorking it with his thumb. He ought to take it before the eating and drinking starts, and the drinking seems about to begin. Holding his head straight and his face impassive, he's raising the vial in his hand in a loose, clandestine hold to his mouth, pinched between his thumb and forefinger, as if to scratch an itch on his lip with his knuckle, when suddenly Lor'themar's arm snakes out and grips his wrist an inch from his mouth. Anduin barely retains the vial between his fingers, as startled as he is to be stopped.

"Prince Anduin?" Lor'themar says quickly, questioningly. Lor'themar lowers Anduin's hand out of sight, behind the table. Anduin doesn't fight the exertion of gentle force against his wrist. Lor'themar's hold is not tight, but the pressure of his hand is unmistakable; his hands have a warrior's strength and he does not immediately let go. His fingertips feel calloused against the back of Anduin's hand.

Anduin's reluctant to confess his purpose, but he has little choice now. He's not sure how many elves in the hall have noticed what's happening at the head table, but he's conscious of Rommath's eyes and Halduron's on him. "It's a prophylactic antidote to a number of different poisons," he admits quietly. "Please forgive me the apparent mistrust. My father worries for my safety when I'm away from home, and he insisted."

"Liferoot and inspissated essence of stranglekelp?" Lor'themar asks, finally releasing Anduin's wrist, but keeping his hand atop Anduin's forearm. His nails are neatly trimmed to a stubby shortness and lacquered with scarlet enamel, Anduin sees, and the back of his hand is visibly scarred in two places at only a glance. 

Anduin frowns. "I think so?" He hesitates, weighing the open vial still half-concealed in his palm, below eye level behind the table. "I don't know. I know it's liferoot based."

"Then please, refrain," Lor'themar requests courteously. "Our purposes align. I, too, worry for your safety here, and a likely identical potion has already been infused into your food." He lets that sink in for a moment, then continues. "I don't know how strongly you brew them in Stormwind, and these tinctures are generally the mildest of purgatives, but an overdose will still bring on painful cramps." Lor'themar withdraws his hand then, allowing Anduin to make his own choice.

Anduin stares at him another second, then glances down to his lap and gropes for the tiny cork. Pressing it back into the mouth of the vial, he drops the potion back into his pocket.

Lor'themar smiles at him, and again Anduin is struck by his great--if compromised--beauty and the kindness that dwells in his face.

"You have amazing reflexes," Anduin says, bowing his head to Lor'themar. "And phenomenal--powers of observation."

"Our most important guests are always closely watched," Lor'themar says modestly. He laughs as he bows his head in turn, a musical sound, like the harmonious peal of a perfect bell. "And I know your father well enough to know he's a more cautious man than he's often credited to be. Please, think nothing of it."

An elf with a gush of red hair piled atop her head sitting a few seats down suddenly strikes her glass with a spoon thrice, resulting in an abrupt but melodic ringing. The noise of conversations subsides as she rises and begins a toast in Thalassian, which Anduin neither speaks nor understands. Lor'themar leans over and quietly translates into Anduin's ear. His breath tickles as he whispers, in a sensual way, and Anduin feels a stirring low in his stomach, a feeling that quickly dips lower down into his groin. But it's hardly the first time he's become aroused at an inappropriate moment, so he only rearranges his napkin over his lap and casually rests his folded hands to better conceal his body's reaction.

Lor'themar can't possibly know what effect his lips are having, for the delicate tickling sensation in Anduin's ear continues, simultaneously heightening the impact of Lor'themar's words and making concentrating on them extremely difficult, although Anduin picks up generic remarks about the power of the sin'dorei, the might of their leadership, the strength of their empire, the beauty of the elves' home, the honor of their traditions. At one point the red-haired elf turns, looks at Anduin and says a few words.

"She welcomes you to Silvermoon City and hopes your visit is as delightful as the sun is bright," Lor'themar whispers, and he adds, with an audible trace of mischief, "We won't tell her the Hall of Mirrored Lights was already brighter than you prefer."

Anduin's amused and silently pleased to have Lor'themar joking with him, but it wouldn't do to laugh as though he and Lor'themar are children whispering secrets during a formal oration, so he sustains his polite, fixed smile. Holding eye contact with the elf, Anduin bows his head to her as she finishes addressing him directly.

When the toast concludes, Lor'themar pulls his tickling lips away, and all the elves pick up the glasses of pale liqueur and drain them. Anduin puts his glass to his lips and discreetly samples the alcohol with his lips and tongue before drinking it. The liqueur is as viscous as it appeared to be when it was poured, and the taste is of honey, cream and sweet fruit. The drink is strong, as his father warned it would be, and the sweet taste is belied by the sudden fiery bite of the alcohol that follows in his mouth then disappears, leaving a trace aftertaste of burnt sugar, a finish that deepens into caramel.

The cadre of servants begin to move amongst the tables again, refilling the toasting flutes. Within a minute another elf, this one an aged man with a mane of long white hair, has stood, tapped his glass, and begun a second speech. Lor'themar leans back in and begins whispering a translation again. This speech seems hardly different from the first. Anduin can feel his limbs loosening, his chest relaxing from the single draught of alcohol.

Halduron listens to the toasts with a smile upon his lips; Rommath looks irritated the entire time and does not drink with everyone else. Anduin supposes as leader of all Silvermoon's magi, Rommath can do anything he wants, but all the other elves imbibe after each toast, and Anduin himself does not wish to be rude. Yet he must measure the potential discourtesy of not drinking against the possibility of embarrassing himself or the rudeness of simply passing out before they've finished with him for the evening. By the time the third toast is given, Anduin's feeling more limp and relaxed than he'd prefer. He thinks it would be wise to get food into his belly promptly, but of course that's not his decision to make. He's glad when Lor'themar rises next to him, presuming the regent lord will be the last to speak. Lor'themar keeps his toast considerably shorter than the other elves, and he breaks into Common at the end to address Anduin.

"I also welcome His Highness Prince Anduin Wrynn of Stormwind to Quel'Thalas. May your stay here with us be edifying and pleasurable, Prince Anduin."

Anduin bows his head when Lor'themar nods his own. Lor'themar says a few more words in Thalassian, and they all drink again, save Rommath who still leaves his glass untouched.

As Lor'themar sits back down, the servants gracefully move to and fro, taking away the toasting flutes and replacing them with small wine glasses, and then the first course is served. The servants briefly describe, in Thalassian, the dishes they're about to eat as they're set down, and the elf who serves Anduin leans down slightly as she says, "A salad of figs and roquefort cheese" in Common. The size of the fresh-leafed salad placed before him is modest, but Anduin's been to his share of extravagant banquets, and usually when the portions are on the small side it's because there are an outrageous number of them to follow. With the salad, pine nut rolls are set onto their bread plates, and Anduin rips into his to get something absorbent into his stomach before he digs into the salad.

Two bottles from Anduin's host gift are opened and served during the second course, a dish of glazed grilled icefin with a pomegranate sauce, and his father's choice is well received. Lor'themar nurses his small glass of the wine meditatively. "This is magnificent," Lor'themar tells him, nodding thanks.

"It's very good," Halduron agrees.

Anduin puts his lips on the glass of the Menethil Harbor and tilts it but refrains from even trying the wine he brought. He wants to sober up some, not get drunker. "Not as delicious as this dish," he says, and he feels and hears the slight, imperfect slur of his 's's and the mush of his 'sh', a sentence with multiple minute slips in his speech. But Anduin knows what it feels like to be wasted, from one wonderful, terrible night when Wrathion convinced him to do some hard drinking, and he doesn't feel that way yet. He feels tipsy, perhaps on the verge of drunkenness but in control of himself, and that at least is reassuring. He only needs to be more careful to enunciate, to keep eating, and continue not to drink.

Rumors and his father had been exaggerating about the brazen sexuality... somewhat. No one outright makes love at the table, but more than one pair of elves sharing the loveseat-style, double-wide settees kiss and even grope one another over their clothes, openly and ardently. Two elves on single settees drag their seats closer together to do the same, and hands do slip under garments here and there, though all the couples are quiet, more so than the elves conducting spirited conversations around them. No one seems to pay any special attention to the pairs kissing, so Anduin makes good on his word to his father, and does not gawk or let his eyes linger longer on the couples than anywhere else.

Still, he glances at them, and during the fifth course, a meat dish with the texture of an artfully aged pork tenderloin, but which the servant who set it down told him is lynx, Halduron follows his gaze. "I hope you don't think us uncouth," Halduron says, smiling. "Many love affairs are secret. Others, not so much. I know humans are more... ah... the word that comes to mind is prudish, though I don't mean to be insulting."

Anduin tries to hide a smile and fails. "No offense taken, though I would suggest... more conservative?"

"Conservative, perfect," Halduron says, chortling.

"But I think it's nice," Anduin says truthfully and thoughtlessly, and he promptly blushes at the accidental implication that he likes to see such intimacy. Halduron and Lor'themar both laugh, so Anduin lets himself laugh along with them. One corner of Rommath's mouth turns up, though for some reason Anduin doesn't think his amusement stems from the same source. Over the dull roar of the conversations of the feast, Rommath is probably too far away to hear him speak. Anduin wonders if he can read lips.

Palate cleansers are served between courses, something Anduin has only ever seen done in Dalaran. He drinks half shotglasses of unsweetened tea, eats tiny scoops of lemon sorbet, drinks doll-sized teacups of spring water flavoured with twists of citrus, and by far the oddest and most interesting fare that night, he eats celery sorbet that's a culinary epiphany. His elven server stumbles over the word 'sorbet.'

"This tastes so... clean," he marvels. He takes another small spoonful and places it in his mouth. The taste is not sweet, only deeply refreshing. "This is possibly the most amazing thing I've ever had in my mouth." He needs to watch himself, he's going from brain straight to tongue. That toasting liqueur truly was strong, and four glasses on an empty stomach was definitely too much of it. 

"I'm glad it pleases," Lor'themar says in his calm way, but Halduron guffaws at Anduin's phrasing.

"If that's the finest thing you've ever had in your mouth," Halduron says, "you haven't been in Quel'Thalas long enough." He laughs even harder when Anduin colors again. Anduin's not even sure how Halduron can tell he's blushing with his cheeks so flushed from drinking.

* * *

Anduin feels like he can't tolerate another bite well before dinner is over, and he can only manage a few bites of the different dessert courses. When the last dessert has been served and the feast begins to wrap up, the four of them walk through the vast hall, going up some steps and out onto a private terrace overlooking a courtyard with a low stage. Anduin's pleased to be able to walk more or less straight. The terrace has no couches, only plump seat-cushions on the floor, and Lor'themar gestures for Anduin to take one as they all sit. A pair of servants bring forth large hookahs, setting them before Halduron and Lor'themar, and then retreat to stand against the walls. In the courtyard below them, elves in formal dress stream out and seat themselves on picnic linens or directly on the grass.

"Do you smoke anything, Anduin?" Lor'themar asks, as Rommath stirs the charcoal in one of the hookahs with his fingers, kindling them and turning the squares of coal red-hot. Rommath's fingernails are lacquered like Lor'themar's but long for a man, Anduin notices, shaped into gently pointed, golden ovals.

"I've never tried," he admits, muffling a hiccup, but his 'no' must be written all over his face, for at the same time Halduron says, laughing, "By the time you go home, you will."

Rommath turns his attention to the coals in the second hookah, ignoring them all. 

"It is a pleasant vice," Lor'themar says, "and if you want to experience our culture you must at least try it." He drags his hookah closer to Anduin, placing it between them, and offers him one of the paired hoses.

Anduin hesitates, his father's words running through his mind. _Or more likely ply you with whatever it is they all smoke._ But Lor'themar is smoking the exact same substance, and he does not wish to be rude, so he accepts the pipette from the elf regent. Sharing a smoking apparatus is a bit of an intimacy to be sure, but less so than sharing a single cup during a ritual circle in the Cathedral of Light.

"You will choke a bit your first time," Lor'themar says wisely, as if introduction-to-smoking lessons interest him. "Breathe gently to start."

Nodding as he puts the mouthpiece to his lips, Anduin sucks a small breath and immediately lowers the pipette, coughing.

Lor'themar claps him on the back once, which surprisingly actually seems to help. Lor'themar is smiling, but Halduon laughs openly. "You are a magnificent source of entertainment, your Highness," Halduron says, chuckling.

"Please, just Anduin." Anduin nearly coughs the words into his hand, his eyes watering, his voice rasping from his irritated throat.

"Halduron, how dare you," Lor'themar says placidly, and accepts a cup of water from a servant and puts it into Anduin's hand. "Do forgive him, Anduin. He's many times your age, yet somehow, far less mature."

Halduron protests. "That was a compliment of the highest order. I only meant that Anduin is fun. When did we last have a guest who was such an excellent sport about everything?"

"A fair point," Lor'themar says to Halduron, relenting, and he turns back to Anduin. "Try again," Lor'themar says pleasantly, pressing the pipette back into his hands when Anduin goes to pass it back. Lor'themar's tone is light, as though not to discourage. "As I said, the second time is better. The third time, you'll almost do it like one of us."

"Slow and steady, still," Halduron adds. "Too much too fast and you'll get tongue burn."

'Tongue burn' sounds like the sort of risk that makes this whole enterprise unrewarding, but Anduin puts the mouthpiece back to his lips and slowly inhales again, managing this time to hold the small mass of warm, moist, fragrant air in his lungs for a moment. On his second inhalation he's able to taste and smell the mist better, and he gets notes of apple and papaya and a piquant flavor that's strange yet compliments the fruits. He minimizes the cough his chest wants to produce on his exhale.

"Good," Lor'themar says warmly, and Anduin isn't sure what to make of the answering heat in his chest. He likes Lor'themar probably more than he should.

He takes another handful of hits from the hookah. Halduron smokes his own, a hookah with a single hose. Anduin observes too that Rommath does not choose to smoke.

In the grassy courtyard below them, a dozen dancers glide up onto the low stage, and the crowd quiets.

"More traditional entertainment than our young guest," Rommath murmurs, although Anduin glances at him and sees no sign of pleasure upon his grim and beautiful face.

Half men, half women, the dancers are each barely clad in layered wisps of silk, pink and orange and yellow and periwinkle, all the colors of the setting sun sliding down through the sky behind them. The entertainers are all slim, but they have unusual upper-body musculature for dancers, Anduin thinks. They twirl and sinuously twist in unison, and languid music begins, lute and drum and flute and lyre and the sound of an instrument Anduin can't name. The players must be directly beneath the balcony, for he can't see the source of the music. When the music comes faster, the dancers execute their motions faster, until they're a streaking blur of colors, equally graceful moving quickly as they were slow. The dancing escalates to high leaps and bounds, and Anduin sees the reason all the dancers are well-muscled-- they begin to throw one another high up in the air, spinning, and catch each other just as gracefully.

* * *

He feels pleasantly floaty on the walk with Halduron back to his rooms an hour later, relaxed but sharp and aware, like he's begun to exist outside time, and he watches the cats and the elves and the birds move in slow motion around him, like all the world has slowed for him to observe. Keeping his footing is not a problem, though he's perhaps not quite as able to walk perfectly straight. Six Silvermoon guards accompany his own.

Once he's bid Halduron and his guards goodnight, and is safely in his room and out of their sight, with no performance of sobriety to keep up he lets his footing become sloppier. He ambles to bed, pulling off clothes and stripping down to his smallclothes as he goes, and as he walks past the red and yellow silk changing screen, he clumsily snags his his nightshirt from where Wyll hung it for his convenience. Pulling the nightshirt over his head and straightening it, he notices a bowl of mixed fruit has been set on the table, and he looks at it as he walks, but he's not even remotely ready to think about eating more. But he sees heaven peaches and snowplums, goldenbark apples and grapes, and he'll probably be hungry in the morning with no idea when or how breakfast happens. He reaches his bed and pushes off an armful of the decorative pillows covering half its surface, and from the yellow and orange silk duvet beneath, a woman suddenly emerges.

An elf woman is in his bed, an elf woman with long, fiery auburn hair, no shirt, luscious breasts, and a sly expression Anduin somehow associates with Wrathion.

Anduin freezes, and now he's the perfectly stone-fixed center point while the universe moves dizzyingly around him. He stands still long enough for her to reach up and grab his nightshirt by a handful of the collar. She's smiling playfully, knowingly, and she pulls him forward and down to her. Frozen, but moving, Anduin lets her tug him down, rolling and passing over her and ending up beside her, barely able to breathe. His senses still feel heightened. The bed is cool and firm under him, but her body is warm. She's naked, and he can smell her light perfume, something with rosewater, and under that the clean, faintly musky, feminine scent of her body. He feels his own arousal as a localized stab to the lower abdomen, square in his gut, and the feeling sinks down even lower and he wants her, just like that.

Courtesans, many courtesans, he thinks blindly, and they've been treating him as a guest of honor, and he's of age but unwed, of course there's a would-be bedwarmer lying in wait for him here.

"I wondered when you'd come, love," she says, and she takes his stunned, limp hand and guides it to the cleft between her legs, parted for him under the covers. His fingers jerk at the contact because her sex is wet and slippery to the touch, and life, movement, agency return to him as he touches. The whole region's wet, like her arousal could not be contained but has spilled out all over the tops of her thighs. He strokes her because his hand is already there and because her womanly parts feel like slick, layered petals.

His fingers explore of their own accord. He strokes up once to a shudder from her and down once to a gasp, and without really intending to he slips his middle finger inside her. She moans at his touch, and he hardens even further. He pushes his finger in until his hand is flush against her sex. She's unbelievably hot and wet inside. Her violet fingernails graze over his chest before her hand slides down to find his cock, covered by a single layer of thin fabric, and she rubs, and she's talking to him, he's gorgeous, even more handsome than she expected, his body is beautiful, his scars are sexy, he must be very brave.

When she leans forward and kisses him he realizes his lips are parted in awe and desire, and she moves her mouth over to his ear. "I want to do everything with you," she whispers, and her breath and the tip of her tongue delicately tickles his ear, all sensuality. The sensation takes him back to Lor'themar whispering translations of sin'dorei banquet speeches into his ear, and really, that had been much more erotic than it should have been.

Their bodies are nearly lined up side by side, and it would be so easy, just a clumsy yank at his shorts to free his aching cock and a shift and a wiggle and he could be inside her, could just press her onto her back and push into her and come inside her. And he wants to so much. He thinks he might last about three thrusts.

"Tell me what you want, dear boy," she purrs, reminding him of someone else who used to call him 'dear,' red eyes gleaming with debatable intentions, and the memory breaks the spell a little. She might be dripping wet for him, but she's also almost certainly being paid to be here. And if she's being paid, she might leave here and report... whatever about him. About his tastes, the things he says, his skill--or lack thereof, Anduin's not so egotistical as to think he'll be an expert straight out of the gate. Anduin doesn't think it likely, but anything's possible. Being royalty means always thinking about potential blackmail material.

_Tell me what you want._

He doesn't want this, as much as he does. There's too much wrong here.

The better part of Anduin wants a marriage sanctified by the Light. Or, since his chances of marrying Wrathion are approximately nine hundred million to one, due to gender, species, obsessive plotting and double-crossing behavior, perhaps no marriage, but to come together bodily with someone for whom he cares. That would be alright... that would be more than alright. If Wrathion had openly indicated the slightest interest in taking him to bed, Anduin would have cast away his relative innocence like so many handfuls of rose petals during Love-is-in-the-Air.

Her hand makes a circle, closing around him, and he can't hold in his gasp. The adventurous fingers of her other hand stroke his balls, and he thrusts into her warm fingers, high on the smell and feel of her but thinking of Wrathion.

But this, appealing though it may seem in this moment, this is not alright. If all he wanted was to selfishly seek pleasure in the most sacred parts of someone he's never met, he could have visited an upscale brothel already. Anduin would never judge anyone for enjoying a romp in a pleasure house, Light knows he's been tempted, but though nobody's ever told him he shouldn't, to him it seems like procuring the services of a prostitute arguably violates the first and third of the Three Virtues. And courtesans are prostitutes, after an elegant, roundabout fashion. Even if gold never leaves his hand, he can't morally write this off.

He wants so much to put his cock inside her and come, but on top of everything else here--he could end up having a half-elven child with a blood elf he doesn't know.

The mental clarity coming to him in a muddled trickle surges into a clear, cold flood at that stray thought, and his ardor cools at least marginally.

Anduin swallows hard and opens his mouth to confess his chastity and decline, but even addled as he is from the drink followed by the hookah smoke, long-honed instincts hold him back and snap his lips closed. Personal information can always be used as a weapon, and he certainly isn't going to hand a stranger a blunt instrument of that caliber. If by way of refusing he admits to her she'd be his first, it might be even harder to demur and get her out of his room.

He's tempted, so tempted, to let her finish him off with her hand, but that would change nothing morally, and the idea of spilling his seed even anywhere near her feels too risky, like his desperate want to get inside her could somehow make conception a more likely outcome.

Flushing a deeper red than he ever has in his life, he pulls back his wet, trembling hand, brushing her fingers off his cock and covering himself, and he withdraws from her, scooting a couple of inches backward on the bed and shaking his head. "No, thank you, no, you're incredibly-- you're incredible, but I can't." He stammers and doesn't even care. His twisted tongue seems appropriate, in fact.

She accepts both the flattery and the rejection with good graces, smiling faintly and trailing fingers down his arm. "No? I have a friend," she whispers, "perhaps you might like better? He's very handsome, very strong, and I know he'd find you very handsome also."

Anduin blushes to the roots of his hair at this suggestion. "No, thank you, I just want to sleep," he says. The words come out weakly, possibly the most absurd lie he's ever told.

She smirks at him to convey the sentiment of _I don't believe you_ , her eyes sidling down his body. Stretching an arm upwards, holding his eyes now, she fingers the fringe of the yellow silken cord danging against the canopy and makes one final proposal. "Should you change your mind, or want something to help you sleep, you need only call." She rises from the bed, slipping out from under the covers naked. She's not shy in the least, and her walk is sultry as she heads out to the parlor, still smiling at him over her shoulder.

He breathes a sigh of relief as the bedchamber curtain drops closed behind her, and he waits only seconds before pulling open his smallclothes to stroke himself, holding his left hand to his nose and inhaling the intoxicating, delicious, mysterious scent clinging to his fingers. Three slow strokes, a squeeze, a couple of fast jerks and he's coming into his hand.

Only after he's done, cleaned up and ready to sleep does it hit him what a raucous shock it must have been to his guards to see a random blood elf woman saunter out of his rooms without any clothes. There's no question his father will hear about it, and he puts a hand to his forehead and groans.


	3. Chapter 3

But his guards don't blink an eye at him the next morning. No eyebrows are raised, no one looks at him funny, no questions are asked, no one acts any differently at all. A servant brings breakfast to him on a tray, juice and hot tea, toast with butter and a small pitcher of honey, a slice of egg pie containing small chunks of a ham-like meat that might be lynx, and a plate of sliced fruits different from the contents of the fruit bowl left on his table. He's unused to having breakfast alone, so he chooses a book from the shelf of them in the study and reads while he eats. Only a third or so of the books are written in Common, so his selection is limited. The book he finally picks is a romance novel, not his preferred reading material unless the love scenes are intriguingly dirty, but the story turns out to be a surprisingly readable one, and he gets caught up in the plot.

Precisely one hour after breakfast is delivered, another knock comes at his door, and Anduin tucks the book under a cushion before he grabs his bag and opens the door. Rommath stands outside waiting. He has no elven guards, but four hulking arcane golems hover in the wide corridor behind him, and Anduin's guards also stand ready to follow the lot of them out.

"Good morning," Rommath says, but he utters these two words as though it is in fact a terrible morning, and his face is set in dour lines.

"Good morning," Anduin answers.

"Do you have clean clothes?" Rommath asks, glancing to the bag hanging at Anduin's hip.

"Yes," Anduin says, laying a hand over the bag. "Nothing else though."

"You'll need nothing else," Rommath says tonelessly.

Anduin looks over the arcane golems again. Their bulk takes up an abundance of space. "Do you prefer magical guards to men, Grand Magister?"

"I don't care," Rommath says.

"How many do you usually keep with you?" Anduin asks, curious as well as attempting to start a polite conversation.

"One arcane guardian usually suffices," Rommath answers, and Anduin can guess which one--the third golem from the left is different from the other three, a bit larger and enameled with variant colors. "Two if elves. You're wondering why we have so many."

"Well... it does make for a substantial entourage." He eases out the door and he and Rommath begin to walk down the hallway towards the orbs. Anduin glances behind. He's not sure he wants to be followed by this parade into the bathhouse. With all the things he'd anticipated in Quel'Thalas, having quintuple the guards he has at home was not one of them.

"Many of our people have lingering anger over the violence in Dalaran," Rommath says, his tone suggesting that he too has lasting anger over the purge of the Sunreavers.

"Understandably," Anduin says gravely, slightly apologetic.

"You can't be unaware of the risk, with your tinctures against poisoning," Rommath suggests coolly. "And while anyone who knows you would know you had _nothing_ to do with what happened in Dalaran, many will look at you and simply see a human and an enemy."

"Right." He wonders at Rommath's sarcastic emphasis of _nothing_.

Rommath leans on his staff as they leave the Spire and walk to the bathhouse together. Rommath barely looks in his direction, but he goes on in his quiet voice. "Can you imagine if anything happened to you here? If you were killed, the diplomatic incident that would result..." Rommath shakes his head. "'Diplomatic incident' is a pat phrase for 'your father would seek to murder every man, woman, and child here, and rip our fair city apart stone by stone.'"

Anduin looks sideways at Rommath, wondering if the grand magister is trying to get a rise out of him. He glances behind at the arcane guardians, silent and hulking, moving slowly after them, followed by six of Anduin's guards, some of who seem vaguely uneasy, though whether by the arcane constructs or his conversation with Rommath, Anduin doesn't know. "My father's not a mad dog, and I don't think that would be his reaction, especially since I specifically asked to come here," he objects, keeping his voice level. "But I understand the concern."

Rommath casts a disbelieving look at him. "You have any doubt whatsoever that if anything happened to you here, the Horde-Alliance war would be re-ignited in force with Quel'Thalas at its center?" 

"I hadn't thought about it in those exact terms," Anduin admits.

Rommath shakes his head as though Anduin's lack of insight is stupendous, the stuff of fantasy.

Anduin pauses, unsure what to say. "My presence here must be a tremendous worry for you, then."

Rommath gives a small, graceful shrug. "A worry matched only by the inconvenience."

Anduin absorbs the waves of blunt, resentful hostility, and thinks for a second about how to decorously get the better of Rommath in this conversation, to set a verbal trap as he and Wrathion used to do to one another for sport constantly. He asks, neutrally, "Why did Lor'themar agree to let me come, then?"

"Lingering gratitude towards the Prophet Velen," Rommath replies with a cavalier little gesture of his free hand, as though this gratitude is unearned, a weight Lor'themar should have long since cast off. "Your mentor is known to favor you. And a calculated risk, I suppose. Your father won't live forever. You could look at it as taking the measure of an enemy, but Lor'themar would like friendly relations with you."

Checkmate, Rommath's walked right into it. "I thought as much," Anduin says pointedly, implying as delicately as possible that he's noticed Rommath's discourtesy, and that his rudeness would go against Lor'themar's wishes.

For the first time, Rommath turns and gives him a genuine smile, as though Anduin has been unexpectedly entertaining, as though Anduin is a show he'd expected to be boring and he's been pleasantly surprised. But he says nothing.

The bathhouse is a massive structure as they approach it. Made of white stone like most of the buildings in Silvermoon, it's a wide, sprawling but relatively squat structure compared to all the toweringly high halls and minarets. The arcane guardians and Anduin's guards follow them in.

Rommath leads him through a foyer deeper inside, into a changing room. A line of carved marble openings (too fancy and handsomely fashioned to term cubbies, but--cubbies) with hooks and shelves are set into one long wall. The closed curtains are opaque, the ones pulled to the side transparent. Catching Anduin's eye and nodding towards the hooks, Rommath begins to disrobe.

Anduin gets the sense he's being tested, here, so he keeps his face expressionless as he takes his clothes off, hanging or tucking each piece of his clothing beside Rommath's. The grand magister is evidently unselfconscious about his body, and Anduin can only pretend to feel the same, though in truth he's discomfited to be naked in front of an untold number of elven strangers and this many of his own guards, not to mention Rommath. He should be more accustomed to having no privacy. Over the years Anduin's been to many bathhouses, at home and in Darnassus and Ironforge and the alien situation that passed for a bathhouse in the Exodar, but when he agreed so readily to it here, he hadn't thought it through, for he finds blood elves of both genders extremely alluring. At home these days he has baths drawn in his room. His body is better under his control than it was a few years ago, but he still steels himself, preparing mental images of troll feet and gnoll faces should he find himself becoming inadvertently aroused.

The handful of elves around, most in varying stages of undress, seem intent on giving him and Rommath their space, steering a wide, respectful berth around them.

The bathhouse is the sole place in Silvermoon City that Anduin has seen where the sexes are separated. Standard bathhouse etiquette applies; Anduin takes care to keep his eyes up and not stare at anyone, which is considerably more difficult than it was in the perpetually furry bathhouse in the Shrine of Seven Stars.

But when his back is to his guards, and Rommath is half-turned away, he looks Rommath over quickly and discreetly. Anduin had understood Rommath to be old, and his venerable, dignified, tired eyes would seem to confirm that, but his body looks as youthful as the rest of his face, with little in the way of wrinkles, sagging skin, red discoloration, blotchiness, crepey skin, thinning hair, or any of the other signs of aging Anduin's seen in elderly humans over the past few years in his capacity as a healer. Were Rommath human, Anduin would guess his age at perhaps forty but no more than forty-five. Rommath's hair is dark and thick and lustrous, and there's no gray in the hair at his groin. His skin looks soft and smooth and pale all over, save for strangely shaped, geometric tattoos that streak along his arms and legs and hips and chest. The scarlet markings seem fresh and not at all faded the way old tattoos get, though their winding colors vary in color from burnt orange to blood red to deep crimson, and as Anduin looks the colors blur and swim a little, almost feeling like they're hurting his eyes. Anduin blinks hard and looks away from them. Rommath's tattoos are no simple decoration, that much is clear.

Rommath finishes undressing and turns, interrupting any further observations, and he walks to a low trough edging the floor against a wall and begins to empty his bladder into the gutter. Anduin hangs back only a second before joining him. After Rommath finishes, he rests his hand against the wall and waits a few seconds for Anduin, enough for Anduin to feel like they're there together rather than that he's tagging along after the grand magister.

Rommath had seemed to lean on his staff on the walk over, but he walks equally gracefully without it. Rommath leads him naked through a hallway and into a room with a lapping marble pool set into the floor, moving in gentle waves as on a sheltered beach on the ocean, and stronger waves farther in. A handful of elves are swimming, and arcane guardians patrol along the walls. Rommath strides into the water, and so Anduin follows. The bottom of the pool slopes subtly downwards for ease of entry and departure, and Anduin goes waist deep before shallowly diving under. The water is pleasurably warm, and the waves grow higher and fiercer as he ventures deeper. Anduin surfaces and turns to take a wave against his back, and he laughs as it sweeps him up and moves him forward, because the whole experience is delightful. Waves in a bathhouse. His enjoyment must show in his expression, and it must also be a little funny, for a few elves stop and smile at him, friendly mirth on their faces.

"I've been in bathhouses in many places, but none like this," he says when he makes his way back to Rommath, but Rommath only nods, expressionless, as though he knows well his city's superiority, making Anduin's comment nearly beneath note.

They stay in the warm pool for only a short time before Rommath wordlessly turns and leaves the water, and Anduin follows him. They take a seconds-long, uncomfortable dip in a cold, much smaller pool, and then an attendant approaches to hand them towels. Rommath wraps his around his waist and tucks it into itself, and so Anduin follows suit.

They wind through an extensive series of hallways and sauna rooms, all lined with old teak benches, well-seasoned to a silvery gray-gold by constant moisture. The arcane guardians and Anduin's guards trail them. Like the city streets, the space seems vast for the number of elves present. Rommath chooses a room that's nearly empty but for foot traffic, a large room with space enough for the guardians and Anduin's guards to hover within sight but probably out of hearing distance should he and Rommath speak quietly. Elves passing through look at them, but perhaps Rommath's presence is forbidding, for no one dares to join them. Many bow their heads respectfully to Rommath, though, and a few pause mid-step and bend at the waist outright. Rommath ignores most of them, though a few earn curtly returned nods.

As they sit, a shirtless elven child clad only in breeches approaches, holding out to them a selection of hot towels, combs, cups of water, and other items. Rommath selects a nail file. When Anduin is offered the platter, he shakes his head and smiles. Rommath commences buffing his golden, slightly pointed nails. Most of the blood elves Anduin's seen have well-kept fingernails, many of them painted with enamel. The splendor makes Anduin feel selfconscious. His own fingernails are not filthy, not like a stablehand or farmer's nails, nor even like they were when he was spending his time sitting in the mud outside the Exodar healing lashers by force, but neither are they spotless.

"We should have your nails polished, make you look like a civilized man while you're here," Rommath suggests, still filing his own sharp ovals. It's the first time he's spoken to Anduin since they entered the bathhouse, and his green eyes glint with amusement.

Mildly humiliating guests by imposing alien cultural norms on them as an ostensible honor is a practice common across many societies, but Anduin hadn't expected to experience it here in Quel'Thalas. Anduin can only imagine the look on his father's face if he returns home with brightly lacquered nails in the sin'dorei style. He'll have to wear gloves until he can chip it off. "If you'd like that, I'd be pleased to try it."

"Well, it is traditional," Rommath says, smiling faintly at his answer. Rommath is having fun with him, Anduin realizes... and what's more, he knows Anduin knows it.

* * *

So it comes that less than an hour later, after they've soaped up and stood side by side under narrowly pouring magical waterfalls to rinse, after he's been laid out on a comfortably shaped slab and had his hair washed by a stranger, he's been handed over to a sin'dorei stylist in a room in the bathhouse that's either private or that's been cleared for him and Rommath. The chamber vaguely resembles one of the basic barber shops in Stormwind, but grander, far more understated and luxurious. White-draped chairs spin before mirrors, but the mirrors are wide and tall and have ornate gilded frames.

Jars and tubes and bottles in every shade of the rainbow line racks and shelves along the walls. Anduin has never seen so much make-up in one place before. Wearing a thick, clean white robe, Anduin sits in one of the upright chairs with the stylist, who's introduced herself as Mereren and who wants to know if she can grow his hair out.

"Uh... sure," he says. "Will it hurt?"

Mereren flashes a dazzling white smile at him, and Anduin realizes he is an endless wellspring of entertainment here. "No, your Highness."

He smiles his assent back, and he feels her fingers running through his hair as though she's urging it forth from his head. His scalp tingles.

"If you don't like it longer, we can cut it short again," she assures him, pulling at sections of his hair gently. As she works, Anduin's lulled by the sensation of shafts of his hair being moved this way and that, by her soft tugging, crumpling his hair, then releasing it, lock by lock, and combing it, a cycling process. He closes his eyes.

He opens them when she stops playing with his hair, but there's no way to see himself, for Mereren has him turned away from the tall mirror. He's facing Rommath, who's lounging on a chaise watching him while a silent, kneeling male elf polishes the grand magister's long fingernails, replacing the gold lacquer with a glossy, liquid black. Rommath has his legs comfortably bent, his knees low but pointing at the ceiling, and he's barefoot. His robe is closed over his thighs, and what's between them lies invisible in shadow. His feet are pale and softly flawless as the rest of him, seemingly without callouses, and his short toenails too are black now.

Mereren walks in front of Anduin, leaning down to run a tiny paintbrush carefully several times around his lips. Her comely face is poised only about six inches away from his face, and he looks into her bright green eyes, but she's utterly concentrated on touching his mouth with the brush. Anduin's not unaccustomed to other people grooming and helping dress him, but usually it's old Wyll who's assisting, not an attractive woman, and nobody ever pokes at his eyelids or stares at him close up like he's a masterwork of art in need of some finishing touches. The intensity of her focus upon him gets him half-hard, and when she next turns away, he reassures himself with a glance downwards that the folds of the white robe sufficiently hide his interest. Mereren strokes his cheeks with a powder brush and briefly clamps his eyelashes with a metal instrument of some kind, and he struggles not to blink or draw away from the disagreeable pulling sensation of the latter. At least the room wasn't large enough to accommodate all his guards, so he'd bid them wait in the corridor. So only the three elves are there to see him trying not to cringe, and one of them has his head bowed over Rommath's long fingernails.

"Here," Mereren says finally, and spins him around to face the mirror, and Anduin is revealed to himself. "What do you think?"

Anduin stares at the image in the mirror. The person reflected there is wearing stunningly feminine make-up, and between the make-up and the elaborate fashion of his hair, he looks almost like a woman. With the width of his face and the still-masculine slope of his jaw, he looks androgynous.

His hair is long now, well past his shoulders. Trimmed neatly, yet far longer, a paradox, and his new mane is styled as cunningly as any woman's, or any male elf's for that matter. His hair is half up, half down, slightly puffy on the top of his head in front, partly pinned back in a messy bun and partly hanging down in loose waves.

His lips have been outlined and colored in as richly and garishly red as Wrathion's eyes, his eyebrows are thicker and light brown instead of their normal blond thinness, and his eyelashes look longer and darker. His skin looks smoother and more even, and the blue of his eyes seems brighter, almost feverish. He presses his lips together and watches them move in the mirror; they're truly his. The red of his lips, the curl of his lashes, the waves of his hair--he looks like a boy whore. Not the impoverished sort who prowl the street for brief clients, but the fancy expensive kind, the sort who live in a pleasure manse, always bathed and made-up and revealingly dressed, and who rarely leave. Anduin has seen a few sitting in upper windows, though that sort of prostitute does not call out to passersby.

"I've never had my hair this long before," is all he says, studying the mirror. 

"Do you like it?" Mereren asks.

Anduin thinks about that, not for too long, because he doesn't want to be rude. "It feels much heavier on my head," he admits, "but I like the way it looks. It's... different. I think it might take some getting used to."

Mereren seems satisfied by this answer, giving him a heartbreakingly beautiful smile. "You'll get accustomed to the weight quickly. But if you change your mind about the length, you can always come back and I'll cut it again or fix it however you like."

Anduin thanks her absently, wondering what Wrathion would say, if Wrathion could see him now, followed immediately by imagining his father's reaction. Wrathion would probably stare at him in that intense, seductive, undressing-Anduin-with-his-eyes way he had, then laugh and suggest Anduin see Madam Goya about a job.

Anduin had felt certain Rommath was subtly mocking him with this makeover business, but behind him, Rommath's reflection looks up in the mirror, and his face appears dead serious. Perhaps Rommath's thinking what he is, though, about him looking like a prostitute, for his only comment is: "Tone down his lips. Tone them down a lot."

"As you wish, my lord," Mereren says, deferential, and adds more cheekily, "Though you can't deny he's pretty as a doll in the red." But a slight nervousness flickers over her face as she says it, as though she's thinking twice about her words, and she adds a second, "My lord," and aims a neat curtsy in Rommath's direction before immediately turning back to the rack of tiny pots.

"He is a prince, not a doll," Rommath says succinctly, his elegant face severe as ever, and the reproof is mild enough, but it's apparent everyone around him leaps to his every syllable, and it's equally clear Rommath is accustomed to this power.

Choosing another color, Mereren begins anew the process of brushing the cream onto his lips. This shade is a soft, pale pink, Anduin sees.

"These cosmetics are enchanted for longevity," Mereren says to Anduin after she finishes painting his lips, and as she speaks she twists a few locks of his blond hair around her fingers, crimping and firming up the loose curls. He watches her in the mirror. "They should last almost a month. So if you don't like any of the shades, we should change them now or before you leave the city."

"No, they're fine," Anduin says. "They're all very nice." He can wear gloves for days, but he's not going to be able to hide his unnaturally colored lips from his father when he returns home, nor his darkened, perfectly arched brows, nor the brown dust enhancing his eyelids.

While for obvious reasons there's no official open trade between the kingdom of Quel'Thalas and the kingdom of Stormwind, Anduin vaguely knew there's a small black market trade in astoundingly expensive sin'dorei make-up. That their face paints have the staying power of weeks explains a lot.

Anduin meets Rommath's eyes in the mirror. He knows use and mastery of the arcane naturally extends lifespans, but with the passage of time, human sorcerers still generally show the normal progress of aging. The additional years are tacked on, or more accurately, drawn out at the end of their lives; they certainly don't look eternally youthful. "Do you often use magic to enhance your appearances here?"

Rommath smiles bloodlessly, in a way that makes Anduin wonder if he looks like a dried-up corpse under whatever magical make-up and enchantments he must be keeping cast over himself. "Oh, yes."

* * *

Lor'themar does a double-take at him when Rommath leads him into Lor'themar's office, his lower lip dropping subtly for a second before he stands.

"Look at you," Lor'themar says, and it's difficult to tell whether Lor'themar is chagrined or charmed by his transformation. Lor'themar comes out from behind his desk to stand before Anduin, regarding him up close. Lor'themar is resplendent in green silk that brings out his eyes, with accents of burnished gold brocade, and his eyepatch again matches his garb as if specially made to do so, the rich jungle green around the outside fading into a shining gold center. His short scarlet nails should clash with the ensemble, but instead he looks amazing, giving Anduin pause in turn as he gazes at Lor'themar. 

"How do you feel?" Lor'themar asks him.

"Pretty," Anduin answers lightly, making it a jest. Lor'themar laughs and takes both Anduin's hands for a few seconds, glancing down at his fingernails, polished in a blaze of bright blue, accented by slashes of silver and gold. Anduin's fingers want to twitch, to close around Lor'themar's palms. Selfconsciously he holds them still until Lor'themar releases him.

"What's going on?" Halduron asks as he enters behind them. Anduin turns his head half in answer, half in greeting, and Halduron's eyes widen at the sight of him. "My. Pretty? You undersell yourself. I would amend it to ravishing," Halduron says as he takes a long look, his face playful. When he glances at Lor'themar, though, his eyebrow is raised.

"I hope ravishing is too strong, and that you can hold back," Anduin says, because banter seems by far the best way to handle this awkwardness. He's looking at Halduron when he says it, and he turns his head just in time to see the quick, sharp look Lor'themar is giving Rommath, who appears indifferent. There are internal politics going on here, dynamics Anduin knows he doesn't understand, wheels within wheels. 

Over make-up. 

But Anduin doesn't dismiss it as silly. Really, it's not the make-up, he knows, but whatever painting his face up like this represents to them. Elves are, in their way, as alien in their customs as draenei.

* * *

Halduron takes him after that but readily admits he has no special plans, and so they simply go wandering through the Court of the Sun.

"Say the word and we'll go straightaway and get the cosmetics removed," Halduron says when they're alone but for the fourteen elven and human guards that trail them. Halduron looks entertained, but Anduin thinks there's a bit of pity there, too. Halduron stops and reaches out to Anduin's face, and Anduin's struck by the impression that Halduron is arrow-straight, like focusing so closely on another man is a step outside his norm.

"No, it's fine," Anduin says mildly, allowing Halduron to take his chin in hand and hold his face near and still a moment, and using the opportunity to examine Halduron's face more closely in turn. Halduron's wearing make-up too, he's fairly sure, though it's lighter and more natural-looking than Anduin's own. "It's not bothering me."

"It becomes you, don't get me wrong, but no one will ask any questions if you want it off," Halduron vows. "I'll make certain of it."

Anduin smiles vaguely. "It's fine. I'm just going to leave it. How many people can claim Grand Magister Rommath presided over their makeover?"

"All right, so long as you realize it's not going to fade for weeks," Halduron says doubtfully.

"I was warned," Anduin says, amused by Halduron's scandalized reaction in spite of himself. "Does Lor'themar use this stuff?"

"Yes, sin'dorei gentlemen do, and he is regent. But his is lighter. We only layer on cosmetics as heavy as yours for special, formal occasions."

"Do you wear it?" Anduin asks. Halduron is, Anduin's pretty certain, but he's curious whether the answer will be truthful. "And Rommath?"

Halduron nods. "Of course. But again, elven gentleman. Light knows what Rommath does with himself. But I know with humans, only women wear cosmetics. And Rommath knows it too."

"Well, they say when in Lordaeron," Anduin says. Halduron laughs, but Anduin resumes seriously anyway. "No, I mean it. If this is what cultured men do here, then it's my honor to wear this. And it is a special occasion for me. I'm here, after all."

"As you wish then," Halduron says agreeably. "You do look nice. So what do you think of Rommath, did he give you a bath with that acid tongue?"

"Actually no, he was very restrained," Anduin says.

Halduron grins. "Violating human gender customs was probably enough for one day. I'd still wager heavy odds he goes all-out on you at some point this week. You know he's only taking you to the bathhouse because that shift interferes the least with his day."

Anduin changes the subject. "I hope this isn't an offensive question, but--"

"Oh please, I'm completely impossible to offend," Halduron says laughingly.

"The pools and fountains are so beautiful. Do people swim in them?"

Halduron's smile broadens. "It's not done, but when it is, a blind eye is turned. During the hottest days of summer, the rules are broken, or back burnered I should say, and you'll see people splashing in the fountain pools. During the Midsummer Fire festival and the spring festival too."

Anduin brightens. "Oh, Noblegarden?" This at least he's familiar with. He's been fond of Noblegarden since he was a boy.

Halduron shakes his head. "We do celebrate Noblegarden with the rest of the world, but I refer to Noral'isera-dorei, our celebration of fertility and renewal. 'Children by green' in your tongue."

"Oh, I see," Anduin says, surprised. So much for 'secretive about the fertility festival.'

"You came at altogether the wrong time of year," Halduron teases. "You just missed it."

Anduin laughs a little uncomfortably. "Probably for the best."

"It's true we don't often ask outsiders to the festival, but we don't often welcome outsiders to the Sunwell either," Halduron says. "Exceptions are made. Allow me to cordially invite you to next year's. You can be my guest."

Anduin's heart beats a little faster, and he glances quickly at Halduron. He'd be lying if he said the idea of the event doesn't interest him, but he can't accept an invitation of this nature; he has no idea what he'd be agreeing to. To be someone's guest at a ritual festival centered around sex--Halduron strikes him as firmly and straightforwardly heterosexual, he eyes every female elf they pass on the street, but what does Anduin know?

And 'children' is right there in the name. That's more than enough to turn him right off. Anduin has no interest in having a child anytime even remotely soon. Assuming his father's safety and good health, Light willing, maybe in a couple of decades.

"You're not sin'dorei, but no one would bat an eye, and I doubt you'd find yourself lonely," Halduron finishes.

"I'm honored to be invited," Anduin says carefully. "Thank you." He'd like to ask what exactly the festival entails, but if he shows any greater curiosity about the topic, Halduron might take it as interest in participation and press him for an answer. If the subject is dropped, he won't have to consider it further unless he receives a formal invitation months from now. Or unless Halduron brings it up again.

"But you know what? Midsummer's coming. The Fire festival is much the same, you should come to that. Twice the ritual, but still all of the fun. But if you keep coming back, you will fall in love with Quel'Thalas, and then you shan't want to return home and it will cause all kinds of problems. But Noral'isera, Midsummer, all worth it." Halduron winks at Anduin, who has no idea what to say to that. He settles for smiling and shaking his head.

Halduron glances back at their group of guards thoughtfully. "Do you ask about the fountains because you like to swim?"

"Oh yes, I do, but I was only curious. I don't want to jump in them if it's not a socially acceptable thing to do," Anduin tells him.

Halduron considers. "Well, we have beautiful waters of just about every kind here. Pools and rivers and lakes and ponds. Want to go swimming?"

Anduin loves the water, but he's just spent an hour walking around without any clothes, and right now seems like a good time to be dressed. "I would like to, but... maybe tomorrow?"

"How about a walk through Eversong, then?"

Anduin agrees readily, if only because he doesn't want to reject suggestion after suggestion when Halduron is trying to keep him busy. He allows Halduron to persuade him to change into the lightweight green and brown leathers of a novice ranger's uniform, so as to preserve his finery from grass stains and the rough of the forest, and the two of them go on a long ride and then an unexpectedly rugged hike through Eversong Forest, trailed by seven of Halduron's Farstriders and Anduin's six perspiring, panting plate-clad guards. 

That afternoon Halduron brings him back to his suite and tells him to dress for dinner. Anduin takes the opportunity to give himself a sponge-bath, for the hike was sweaty work. His borrowed leathers will probably never not smell like him again, he thinks.

The drinking starts long ere dinner, when the four of them go to a more modest hall for a cocktail party with a far smaller group of the nobility. Only a dozen elves enter, and Halduron introduces him to each of the lords and ladies one by one in a lackadaisical receiving line as they file into the room. Anduin's been trained to remember names, but he's tipsy and sin'dorei names are such complicated mouthfuls, he's struggling to keep them straight by the time the line ends and they're all seated. The table is interesting--the short side of the table is wide enough for two and has two place settings, as if for a king and queen. Lor'themar gestures for Anduin to sit in one, then sits next to him. Halduron and Rommath sit at corners to them, across from each other.

The atmosphere is that of a dinner party. They speak a flurry of Thalassian until Lor'themar says something brief in Thalassian and switches to Common. Thereafter they have a single conversation in Common at the table, full of teasing and banter, whereas in the banquet hall there'd been a hundred more private, anonymous conversations happening all around them. A group of this size feels far more intimate and knowing. Anduin's largely content to let the conversation happen around him, which works except for the few times he's directly addressed.

"What do you think of Quel'Thalas, Prince Wrynn?" one of the lords asks him at one point.

"Oh, I love it," Anduin says, groping for the man's name. Lord Bloodvalor? Lord Bloodwrath? "The beauty of your land... it's truly magnificent." He almost says 'unsurpassed' until a memory of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms as it once was surfaces in his mind's eye.

"I hope you won't try to take it from us," Magistrix Fyalenn puts in teasingly.

Anduin sets his elbows on the table, leaning forward and resting his chin on his folded hands briefly. "You're already feeding and feting me here in every possible way, I'd be mad to want to," he says, focusing on enunciating, and he's rewarded with laughter before he sits back.

"And you come to us tonight so well-coiffed," Fyalenn says, a little flirtatiously, or making fun of him, he can't even tell anymore.

"Oh, thank you," Anduin says. "But really the grand magister is responsible for that. I don't walk around nearly this handsome at home."

Heads turn to Rommath, who bows his head mockingly, as though he's amused to be named complicit in the matter of Anduin's excessive make-up. Lor'themar's face is perfectly composed, cool and emotionless, and he shows no reaction.

"Ravishing," Halduron says, and holds his wineglass up to Anduin's to tap. Anduin clinks their glasses together and smiles more weakly than he means to.

After they eat, the whole group files out for a concert outside on the grass, in a large open area overlooking a stage made of the same golden-beige stones that line the streets.

An elf woman rises and comes forward, standing front and center before raising her voice in song. She's young, wearing simple white and gold robes, and Anduin suddenly recognizes her as the acolyte from the Hall of Mirrored Light. Again Anduin hears the melodic strains of an instrument he can't identify. Her voice is strangely moving, the sound of the song haunting.

"It's a highborne hymn," Lor'themar murmurs to him. "A pleasant one. 'The light of the sun sustains us, here we will dwell in peace forever.'"

"Many are considerably darker," Rommath says quietly, still facing the stage and the singer below. "Old elven epicediums." 

At Anduin's questioning face, Lor'themar clarifies: "Funeral laments."

"Also, they turned out to be entirely wrong on the 'peace forever' part," Halduron whispers, and Lor'themar smacks the back of his hand lightly against Halduron's bicep.

* * *

The acolyte doesn't sing long, and after the serenade is over, Rommath and Halduron go their own ways, and he's been handed off to Lor'themar for the remainder of the evening. Anduin's begun to feel a bit like a ball being passed around. As they stroll back towards his office, Lor'themar begins asking how Anduin wants to spend the evening, suggesting activities--they could go explore the magistrate libraries, or go to the theater, or watch a fireworks display outside the city gates.

"We've been doing all the things I want to do," Anduin protests.

"Of course, you are our honored guest," Lor'themar says, as if Anduin's whims are a naturally self-evident priority.

"What would you like to do if I weren't here?" Anduin asks, aware that he probably sounds silly asking this question, but nevertheless feeling as though he's done little thus far but impose upon the sin'dorei heads of state.

Lor'themar's mouth quirks. "If I were alone for the evening, with no plans? I would like to lie in the grass and look at the stars and smoke."

Again Anduin feels a wave of attraction to Lor'themar. Lying in a field smoking is not what Anduin would have expected, and it's not Anduin's first idea for a good time, but he likes the thought of being alone with Lor'themar, or at least, as alone as they can be with ten to twenty pairs of eyes on them. "But I daresay you would find that rather dull," Lor'themar continues. "We might--"

"No," Anduin interrupts, "No, not at all. That sounds wonderfully peaceful right now. I would like that."

Lor'themar gives him a tickled little look, as if he sees through Anduin, but he nods. "Of course, as you wish." He turns his back to Anduin and rummages around on his paper-covered desk and then in the cabinet behind, stashing a few things in the pockets inside his fitted coat.

And so they leave the Spire, trailed by an entourage of ten of Lor'themar's guards and six of Anduin's own. They pass at a brisk pace out of the Court of the Sun, going by intricate gardens and buildings, the latter well-lit from within, until they leave all the lights behind and the stars twinkle clearly in the sky.

They soon depart the path with its many fountains, statues and benches, all on even, manicured grounds. The land turns into low and rolling hills, and instead of leveling and flattening the land here the elves have honored the rises and dips, growing the rather wilder gardens on and around them. Anduin can't name most of the flowers, but the blooms on one species of bush glow with a ghostly luminescence, allowing him to discern the flowers hues in the relative darkness, orange tulips and white lilies and roses of many colors. Lor'themar seems to choose a spot at random behind some florid violet hyacinth, sprawling with his long legs down in the grass. He sits and pulls out a pipe and a pouch of tobacco, tapping out a measured amount with the ease of long practice and swiftly producing some kind of enchanted crystal to light it.

"Thank you," Anduin says as he accepts the pipe from Lor'themar's hand.

Lor'themar repeats the herb packing ritual with his own pipe, slips the mouthpiece between his lips and slides lithely down into the grass, putting an arm behind his head as he lies back. 

A change comes over the regent lord then, as though he's become a different person, left the official Lor'themar blowing in the gentle breeze behind them. He relaxes, the tension visibly departing his body as though with his long breath of the fresh air, and he seems tranquil instead of assessing and on his toes. Anduin glances back and sees their guards are hovering at a respectful distance, and with the whistling breeze they're probably out of earshot if he and Lor'themar don't speak too loudly.

Lor'themar smokes in a way Anduin finds unusual, not puffing on his pipe like the old-timers in Stormwind, but actually deeply breathing through it, same as he had with the hookah, and probably risking or enduring the 'tongue burn' Halduron had warned against. Anduin lies back into the grass, far softer than the grass in Stormwind or even Elwynn Forest, and the crisp, clean air that fills his lungs is commingled with the scent of vanilla and herbs from the pipes.

"Your land is so magical," Anduin says. "I was wondering--do you keep your streets clean with magic?"

"Of course," Lor'themar says, and smiles at him.

Anduin puts the mouthpiece of the pipe between his teeth, taking a slow puff. Sweet vanilla, a touch of peaceblossom, a piquant flavor he recognizes from the hookah, which he assumes is the bloodthistle itself, and other herbs he can't identify. Something savory. He manages not to cough.

"Was Rommath decent to you?" Lor'themar asks. "I can make him look after you; I haven't yet figured out a way to make him pleasant to be around."

"No, he was fine," Anduin says truthfully. "He was very quiet."

Lor'themar relaxes. "Good. I'm glad."

They lie in silence and smoke for a minute. Lor'themar has him puff on the pipe while stirring the tobacco inside with the crystal. Anduin tries inhaling on the pipe, taking a deeper pull rather than puffing on it. Lor'themar looks masculine, thoughtful and wise with his pipe gripped in his mouth. Anduin only feels silly, and he's sure he looks ridiculous. Pipes are for older men. And possibly Halduron, who, when he thinks about it, is also old. Anduin much preferred the hookah.

"So, Garrosh is gone," Lor'themar says.

"Yes," Anduin says soberly. "My father is... well. Let's just say he's not pleased."

"Does he regret now not letting Go'el finish the job?"

Anduin hesitates but decides it can do no harm to answer. Besides, the truth is that he doesn't know. "I'm not sure," he answers finally. "But I don't harbor any doubts. He made the right choice."

Lor'themar stares up at the stars. "I know I'm not alone in thinking the greatest surprise of Garrosh's trial was not the part where a time rift tore open and he and Kairozdormu dropped through the floor, but the part when he spoke in awe of you. And _bowed_." Lor'themar says it as though he witnessed a miracle.

Anduin shifts in the lush grass uncomfortably. "I did little, only talked with him."

"All the more remarkable, then, that you so earned his respect," Lor'themar says, and draws another long, slow breath through his pipe. "You must be a persuasive priest."

"Not persuasive enough, obviously," Anduin says wryly. Garrosh had called out the words like he was throwing a weapon, one that would ricochet around the temple courtroom. _I regret... nothing!_

"I too passed many hours in his company. I daresay he did not hold me in such high esteem." Lor'themar does not sound at all perturbed about this.

Anduin not only remembers Garrosh's words, he can still hear the echo of Garrosh's strident voice in his ears. He thinks he actually remembers a good bit of Garrosh's speech, at least, the part he heard. _Every simpering blood elf--_

"I think prison changed him," Anduin suggests, then amends it. "Eh, a little. At times." He winces at his own verbal clumsiness, his unplanned thoughts. "I sound terribly naive, I know."

"Not at all," Lor'themar says calmly. "Doubtless he must have changed, to express such heartfelt respect for a human. A human he tried rather passionately to kill not long prior. Varian's son at that. You won't be surprised to learn he absolutely loathed your father."

"I'm not," Anduin answers. 

"Loathes, rather, I suppose I shouldn't use the past tense," Lor'themar continues thoughtfully, as if Anduin hadn't spoken.

Anduin waits for Lor'themar to probe further, to weave some cloaked inquiry as to the nature of his conversations with Garrosh. Anduin has a half-readied, politely worded refusal to say anything more revealing, but Lor'themar drops it, seemingly content to lie side by side and look up at the darkening sky, bright with emerging stars.

After a time, when the herbs in their pipes are smoldering low, Lor'themar stretches, shifts and sits up. "I have some work I cannot put off tomorrow morning, unfortunately. Halduron will keep you entertained and I will join you both in the afternoon," Lor'themar says.

Anduin scrambles up as Lor'themar rises in a leisurely fashion. "That sounds good."

"Halduron's become fond of you," Lor'themar says as they walk back to the Spire. "I think he'll be sorry to see you go."

"That's kind," Anduin says, touched. "I really like him too. He's fun. He's wonderfully... free-spirited."

Lor'themar laughs, and again Anduin thinks how much he likes the sound of Lor'themar's light-hearted, musical laugh. "That he is."

"I thank you for indulging me," Lor'themar says gracefully when they reach Anduin's suite, as appreciative as if he were the one who'd pressed for the evening's choice of pastime, and the casual, at-ease Lor'themar is gone, replaced again by the regent lord and watchful, gracious host. "My opportunities for that sort of relaxation are few and far between."

Anduin bids him goodnight and leaves his guards outside, and he enters his rooms cautiously this time. But no elf hides in his bed. Instead, a male elf is sitting openly at the table in his parlor, fully dressed in a formal tunic and matching breeches. His hair is dark like Rommath's, but cropped short, and he seems young, maybe not much older than Anduin himself. He's on the short side, but slim, and muscles are visible under the thin linen of his clothes.

The elf stands at once when he sees Anduin. "Your Highness," he says, bowing.

Anduin's nonplussed. His doors are supposed to be guarded round the clock. "Please, call me Anduin." He may as well ask. "Uh, how do you guys keep getting in here?"

The corners of the elf's wide mouth spread across his face. "It's a secret, Anduin," he says teasingly, but then he draws close to Anduin's side, brushing against him boldly as he passes. The elf puts a hand to what Anduin had taken for a decorative bell-shaped panel in the wall, and he meets Anduin's eyes. "Here."

The mosaic panel is identical to one in his bedchamber, and Anduin wonders if that one leads somewhere too. He steps forward and runs his hands over the frame of the panel. "How do you open it?"

"Now that _would_ be telling," the elf says, more regretfully.

Conscious of the stranger at his side, Anduin passes his hands a second and more careful time over the molding around the bell-shaped mosaic, feeling for a catch or press and not finding one.

"What's your name?" he asks the elf.

"Elenos," the elf says.

"I do appreciate you not being naked in my bed," Anduin says, still seeking with his fingers.

"Not a problem," Elenos says, jaunty. "I am here to get in it, though, if you'd like."

Anduin's hands pause his searching a moment before he continues. "No, thank you," Anduin says. He wants to have sex, of course he does. But not with a strange elf trained to seduction, not even one this handsome and friendly and cocky in a way that reminds him of Wrathion. The thought rings a tiny note of despair in his heart. Are all sexual situations going to somehow remind him of Wrathion, forever?

"As you wish." Elenos' voice remains upbeat, but there's a hint of such sincere disappointment in his face, Anduin stares at him.

Anduin eyes the elf, weighing his options, and gives up looking for the method of opening the panel in his parlor wall. "Can we just talk or something?"

"We can do most things you want," Elenos says agreeably. "I'm here to serve you or keep you company in whatever way you'd prefer."

Anduin considers this offer. He's tired, but not feeling particularly ready to sleep. "Do you know any card games?"

"Oh, sure, at least twenty," Elenos says. Rising, he goes into a small secretary and withdraws a deck of cards. Anduin takes note of the fact that he knows where they're located. Either elves have a single traditional place to keep their playing cards--unlikely--or Elenos has been in this suite before. Age is hard to tell with elves, but Elenos doesn't appear to be much older than him. Anduin wonders how many other times he's been in this room to get in bed with strangers. He can't imagine the forsaken ambassador being offered sin'dorei courtesans.

"Nix the ones that have the word 'strip' in the name, please," Anduin says dryly, and he's joking, but he's also serious.

"Okay." Elenos holds up the deck and shuffles it mid-air, dexterous as a goblin card shark who stayed in the Tavern for a few months, living off his winnings. Elenos' slight smirk suggests bountiful inner amusement as the cards arch and flip and flap. "I know at least eight games, Anduin."

* * *

He jerks off after Elenos leaves.

Elenos is handsome, but Anduin goes back to the familiar territory, long and well-imagined, of Wrathion. For almost a year Wrathion was the star of all Anduin's fantasies, though he temporarily ruined that with his betrayal. Though Wrathion no longer has the stranglehold on Anduin's sexual mindscape that he once did, lately Anduin's begun to revisit thoughts of him that way. Anduin lies on his back in bed with his legs spread and thinks of bending Wrathion over a table, kicking his legs apart and pushing his slickened cock inside Wrathion's tight body. Or getting Wrathion supine on Anduin's bed in the Tavern. Wrathion would open his legs submissively, and Anduin would settle between them, push inside Wrathion and fuck him, slippery with lotion. He'd lie on top of Wrathion, put his whole weight on him while they fucked, and when he lifted his head to kiss Wrathion's dark lips he'd see those red-glowing eyes burning with desire for him.

Positions in his fantasies vary, and before Wrathion and since Wrathion left him Anduin's thought about plenty of other people, people he knows and strangers he's glimpsed and people faceless and indistinct, but the end result is always the same. Anduin wants to press his cock into someone, to feel their tightness, anal or vaginal, to take them. His ultimate fantasy is almost embarrassingly simplistic: he just wants his cock sheathed in someone else's body. Wrathion. High Priestess Laurena. The blood elf girl whose name he never learned. Elenos. Captain Miller. Several gorgeous, appealingly confident older draenei women. Lor'themar. All of them thoroughly inappropriate for one reason or another. Anduin hardly even fantasizes about orgasming, though he knows he wants to do so deep inside the person. Mostly he thinks about thrusting in and pumping his hips, the moment of penetration when he'd start working his cock to satisfy himself. He would attempt to be a considerate lover in reality, of course, would seek to gratify a sexual partner any way they asked, but when the lights are dim and he lies alone and aroused in bed, he just thinks about getting his cock inside someone and pleasuring himself.

He starts out thinking about Wrathion, but his thoughts roam, and when he thrusts his hips in a blur and comes, back arching, the body and face in his mind are Lor'themar's.


	4. Chapter 4

Rommath is silent again in the bathhouse the next morning. But today, rather than being watchful in the dressing chamber and in the pools, he emanates irritation, gazing straight ahead, mostly ignoring Anduin but somehow at the same time radiating hostility. At first, Anduin's content to ignore him in kind, but after a while he starts to wonder if it's ridiculous for both of them to endure each other when Rommath's so clearly annoyed by him.

After ten minutes of uncomfortable silence sitting in the sauna, Anduin decides to take the ram by the horns. "Grand Magister Rommath, look. Would you prefer not to be here with me?"

Rommath glances over at him like Anduin's an insect vexing him during a meal, a fly he might yet decide to swat. "On the contrary, I cherish our every moment," Rommath says waspishly. "I'm quite in awe of you--of your audacity. I can only hope that by basking in your presense I might absorb some of it."

Anduin's mystified. "My... audacity?"

"In coming places you don't belong," Rommath enunciates, as though Anduin's feeble-minded. "We spoke of this yesterday, have you already forgotten?"

"And here you were making me feel so welcome," Anduin says, put on edge. Ordinarily he'd ignore such heightened sarcasm; responding to it in kind is definitely a bad habit he picked up from Wrathion.

"If you weren't as high born as you are, if you were anyone else, or differently positioned within the Alliance, if Garrosh hadn't broken that bell over your head, Lor'themar would have denied you your request to come here," Rommath says, and it's not so much what Rommath says, but how he says it--his words have a cruel precision, quiet and poisonous.

Anduin wonders what the Divine Bell can possibly have to do with Lor'themar allowing him to visit Quel'Thalas. "Can you honestly say you've never used your position and influence to attain something you wanted for personal reasons?" Anduin struggles to remain composed and polite, to ask it without any particular rancor. Rommath's obviously bothered by something, and likely it has little to do with him.

Rommath smiles slightly, as though he appreciates being called out on hypocrisy, but the expression still looks tight somehow, and it vanishes quickly back into his cold, subtle anger. "So what do you _want_ , Prince Anduin? What are you hoping to find as a tourist here?" He wields 'tourist' like a slur.

"Only to see the Sunwell, as I wrote." Anduin understands now what Halduron meant when he spoke of Rommath's acid tongue, but he's puzzled as to where exactly Rommath's going with this. "Did you think I came as a spy for my father?"

Rommath covers his eyes with his hand as though Anduin's giving him a headache. "No, I did not. I understand you're a passable Light-wielder. You would be an unimpressive spy."

"I agree Stormwind can do much better," Anduin says, tense but remaining outwardly calm. "It's clear you don't want me here-- why?"

When he drops his hand to his lap, Rommath's face has all the give of stone. He speaks slowly again, patiently as though Anduin is a child instead of a man grown. "Your visit shows a marked disregard for us. But we've come to expect that from your people, over the years."

Anduin looks at him in confusion. "I've shown nothing but respe--"

"You come to us as an enemy," Rommath interrupts tartly, seemingly losing patience with him. "You're in danger as long as you're here, and while you're here you endanger Quel'Thalas with your presence. For what? Your own satisfaction, to see the Sunwell. As though you think you own the world."

Anduin blinks. "I don't think I own the world, just to get that out of the way," he says, a little astonished. "And I'm in danger everywhere, every hour. Attempts on my life are very nearly routine. So no, the risk I pose to Quel'Thalas specifically didn't occur to me until you brought it up yesterday."

Anduin adds, as graciously as he can, "I can see why you would think me selfish, though, based on that."

Rommath stares at him, every feature hostile. "Perhaps not. I've changed my evaluation of you. You are not thoroughly the entitled little prince I thought, but only partly selfish, and partly too witless to consider the consequences of your actions."

Anduin's stung, and he feels color rise in his cheeks, but he tries his hardest not to let on beyond that. "I wish Lor'themar had refused my request, if the danger is truly that great." Anduin still doubts it is, but Rommath would know better than he, and he speaks sincerely. "I didn't come as an enemy, though, I take exception to that."

"No? What are you if not our enemy?" Rommath retorts. "I know you traveled to Dalaran on your father's behalf, to advocate for the Sunreavers' eviction from the city."

Anduin's heart beats a bit faster with this revelation. The purpose of that trip to meet with Jaina was not public knowledge. He wonders, but he isn't going to ask how Rommath knows such a thing. He gets the comedic mental image of Rommath lying atop the slanting roof of Jaina's private balcony with his chin just past the overhang. Somehow it isn't very funny, though, and he doesn't smile.

"I did, yes," Anduin admits. "To negotiate for their departure--their peaceful withdrawal. That was prior to my father and Lord Theron beginning their secret meetings."

"Well, you got your wish, at least," Rommath says, his voice cutting. "The Horde is exiled from Dalaran, now, and the sin'dorei who remained are locked away indefinitely as prisoners of war. The ones who weren't slain, that is. Congratulations on your victory."

Anduin objects to this accusation more forcefully. "That was not my wish, and I don't think of it as a victory. I would _never_ have advocated for the violence that happened."

"What manner of fool are you then?" Rommath says sharply. "Did you think they would just happily pick up their things and go? Pack a bag?" His voice drips with sarcasm before turning coldly livid again. "Those elves were civilians, and some had dwelt in Dalaran for many human lifetimes. Who are you, and who is your father to seek to turn them out of their homes? As though our history wasn't replete with sufficient numbers of human monsters."

"We're not monsters," Anduin says, angry now, but guilty too. He feels his lips twist with regret, and he tries to keep his voice mild when it wants to harden, though he can't prevent a slight rise in pitch. "I know what happened with Othmar Garithos amounted to war crimes, and I know Jaina has angered you, but the Alliance--"

"We will never be allied with humans again." Rommath interrupts with hissing finality, like it's a vow. "We had little choice at the time, but still I counseled Lor'themar against defecting. But our options were so few, your father or Garrosh, clearly your father seemed the lesser of two evils. But then Proudmoore so thoughtfully stepped up to remind me, and him, and everyone, that your kind has rarely brought us anything but grief. So you. Should not. Be here."

"I understand why you feel that way," Anduin says, forcing calm. "I wish I didn't... but I do."

"Do you now," Rommath says curtly. Rommath looks at him, his thin lips pursed. "So you can you imagine what it's like to lose nine-tenths of your people? We flourished, and then Arthas--why, another human--came over us like a crashing sea wave, unseen in the night until it was too late. Every elven life is precious, now more so than ever, and without the full story of that damned bell, of how Garrosh set the Sunreavers up, and with no regard for the commitment Lor'themar made to your father, Proudmoore happily took the initiative to wipe even more of us out." Rommath seems to seethe to himself, the rage restrained but clearly visible in his face before he suddenly turns his grim, loathing eyes back on Anduin, and it's only his exposure to his father's periodic fits of anger that allow Anduin to hold Rommath's eyes and not to shrink from them. Rommath's voice is icy. "Tell me, were you in Dalaran during the purge, Prince Anduin?"

Anduin shakes his head. "I'd gone--"

"I was," Rommath interrupts again, and his eyes glitter, then grow distant. His voice drops lower, spellbinding. "I led a small group in to save those we could. Aethas was there, a prisoner. Aethas Sunreaver.

"I did not see Proudmoore, but if I had, I promise you, only one of us would have survived an encounter." The words aren't braggadocio; Rommath seems to have no vanity in him at this moment, to have forgotten himself, even. He only describes cold, hard facts, and his next words confirm it. "And it probably wouldn't have been me, as she had an army of mages at her back, and my assistants were scattered, trying to evacuate and rescue as many as we could. Everywhere there was panic and disarray. It was chaos. Some sin'dorei went quietly and survived, imprisoned like Aethas. Crueler fates awaited those who fought to stay in their homes. Many merchants, shopkeeps disinclined to relinquish their livelihoods, were dragged out and murdered."

A quiet fury threads through each word from Rommath's lips. "Jaina and Vereesa had their people killing mine in the streets by sword and fire and ice. It was a bloodbath. In the sewers, she had her people feeding mine to the _sharks_."

Rommath's breathing a bit fast at this point, his tattooed chest rising and falling quickly as with rage, or as though he's not taking in enough air for his quiet, steady output of words, or as though he's still in Dalaran, still fighting the battle, still seeing the carnage he's describing, but gradually his words begin to slow and his breathing evens out. "I ran through a good bit of the city. All over you could hear the screaming. You could smell the panic and the death, the smoke from the fires and the fear and the bloodshed. You could taste it on the wind."

When he says no more, Anduin has the sense that the seemingly relentless storm of his wrath is spent, or at least gusted temporarily off-course.

Out of respect, Anduin waits a little longer before he answers. "It's deplorable, what happened," Anduin says somberly, contrite and subdued. He almost says 'unforgivable', but stops himself, because in the Light nothing is unforgivable, and he's trying to drop that word from his vocabulary. Nothing is unforgivable. "I know your people have suffered tragedy after tragedy. For what it's worth, I regret advocating for the displacement of the Sunreavers. I was wrong to do so. And-- I'd have tried to stop the killing had I been there."

Rommath turns his head to stare sideways down at him, and at first his upper lip curls as though he has found yet another cache of inward malice to vent, but then his eyes fall to Anduin's chest. His eyes fix on the twisted white scars there as though he's seeing them for the first time.

When the Divine Bell broke and rained on him, Anduin was buried both above and below. Had he gone down immediately, he'd likely only have been badly scarred on his back, but he'd managed to keep his feet a fraction of a second, long enough for shards of the brass rubble to get under him where he fell, and so he had gashes and abrasions and whole-body bruises on his front too, to go with all his broken bones. People have treated him as though he must be sensitive about them, but his scars don't trouble Anduin too much. His skin used to be smooth and promisingly handsome, now it's marred and ugly, but that's life in Azeroth for those lucky enough to long survive. He knows he's fortunate to have escaped death at Garrosh's hands, and with all his parts still attached at that. He'd seen the clothes they'd cut off him before they got thrown away, and they'd been shredded to rags, pierced and torn and bloodied in a hundred places. The pain that sometimes grips his bones bothers him much more than the marks on his skin, and at least, Anduin thinks, he didn't mess up his face. Though if he does, someday, he'll live with that too. Scars are living memory of fear and courage and pain, honest symbols of battles lost and won, and many of his favorite people are or have been notably scarred: Magni with his scored and scraped-up nose, Bolvar with the rippling burn marks on both legs, his father with the deep perpendicular slashes across his face, even Jaina with her white hair shows how war has changed her.

Without meaning to, Anduin thinks too of Lor'themar, whose cheek was probably cleaved almost in twain, resulting in the jagged atrophic scars so like Anduin's father's, Lor'themar who lost an eye and lived to cover up the socket and have an entrancing face even in its absence.

Rommath looks him over, thighs and calves and arms in quick glances, his eyes lingering most on the patchwork of faded lines on Anduin's chest, and while Rommath regards him, Anduin examines him openly in turn. Even up close, Rommath's skin appears flawless, what scars he bears (and he does have them, that much is obvious) are either solely internal or hidden by illusionary magic. Again, though, while he can look at Rommath's body, Anduin finds he can't long focus on Rommath's strange tattoos.

Rommath's fel-green eyes look nearly as ancient as Velen's, and weary, so weary, but the hateful darkness in them has dwindled before he turns away.

"I believe you," Rommath says finally, dully.

Anduin's startled by this response.

"Thank you," he says with as much poise as he can muster. Anduin cares about Rommath's opinion. He's not sure why, but he does. He considers his next words before he says them, thinking about alternatives. He could write home, but a message saying 'if anything bad happens to me in Quel'Thalas, please don't start a war over it' would not be likely to inspire confidence or garner any positive reaction from his father. No, there's no alternative.

"But that doesn't absolve you your misdeeds," Rommath says before Anduin can speak again, not looking at him now. "Though I suppose you have your little religion to ease your conscience."

Anduin stares at him. In his lofty way, Rommath is as insulting and disrespectful as Garrosh, but Anduin has to consider Rommath's point separate from his poor attitude. The two are linked, of course.

"You're entitled to any judgement of me you might form, but I don't think you have my measure," Anduin says, carefully keeping emotion out of his voice. "I may not have had your insights coming in, but I've no wish to risk being the cause of further harm to Quel'Thalas or your people. I'll speak to Lor'themar about cutting my visit short. In half, I suppose. I came here to see the Sunwell, and I'll do that, then go."

Rommath glances at him again, intensely, and he nods once. "Good," he says at last. "Of course I'd be more pleased if you left immediately."

"I'm sure you would," Anduin says, the first polite and suitable response that comes into his head.

Together they lapse back into silence. Still, the acrimony on Rommath's face stays diminished, fading into a look of brooding, and the quiet thereafter is a little more comfortable.

* * *

"Have you ever been borne by a hawkstrider?" Halduron asks.

Anduin shakes his head. "I can't say I have."

"I thought likely not," Halduron says, "so I chose one for you that's not only well-trained but also good-tempered. Her name is Peris."

The hawkstriders wear saddles similar to the horses and gryphons Anduin is accustomed to riding, and he admires the plumage of the gray and violet bird Halduron presents to him. The creature bends at the knee for him to climb on, and with her balanced bulk leaning deeply forward, she appears to be bowing. He pets her feathery crown gently once he's astride her, and she fluffs her avian head back and forth proudly.

Riding a hawkstrider isn't too different from riding a horse, Anduin decides as they set off, the main difference being that the trip is less jolting and more lightly bouncy. Peris is energetic and spirited, and she steers them with little input from him, as though she knows where they're headed. 

They ride to the Bazaar, where they hand off the hawkstriders and walk among the carts and shops until Anduin spots a small, familiar furry face near the paving stones. For a second he's not sure if it's the same cat, and then he laughs in surprise and takes a few steps towards it. "Good Light," he says delightedly, and the creature runs up as if pleased to see him. "Hey, you," he says to the cat, bending to stroke along its back. 

"You picked the most untidy feline in the city," Halduron says. "We have many nicer looking animals you can pet, if that's your thing."

"This cat was in the Court of the Sun the other day," he tells Halduron, looking up and shading his eyes against the bright sun. "Do all the cats in the city wander around this much?"

Halduron blinks. "I couldn't say."

"I don't have any treats for you," Anduin tells the cat when it sniffs at his fingers, its tail making the shape of a candy cane. "Lor'themar was carrying around a bag of dried... meat or something," he says to Halduron.

"I know the very bag you mean," Halduron says.

"He also knew this cat was female without looking," Anduin comments after the cat turns and circles and he gets a good look at its backside.

Halduron blows out a breath, almost huffily, but when he answers his voice is pleasant as always. "Yes, well. He fights like a dragonhawk, he's sharp as Quel'delar, he's a great man and a better leader, but Lor'themar would rather be a steward of the forest than regent. Over the years it's given him some quirks," Halduron says. "He knows all the cats, he's named half of them. Sometimes I think if we didn't keep after him he'd sit in the Royal Exchange feeding the squirrels all day. Don't tell him I said that."

Anduin nods, and he pets the far-afield feline, and he does not ask why Lor'themar doesn't relinquish a duty he doesn't want.

* * *

That night's feasting is a dinner party set-up again, but with a different coterie of lords and ladies. The toasts are only a few words long, generic Thalassian benedictions, but for the first time Anduin's seen, Rommath drinks along with everyone else. Anduin's regarding him with some curiosity when their eyes meet by accident, and Rommath raises his eyebrows so challengingly Anduin can't stop himself from looking away.

After the banquet concludes, Rommath teleports out and Halduron leaves with one of the magistrixes, and Anduin finds himself alone with Lor'themar. Promptly, before activities can be listed and suggested, he asks whether Lor'themar would like to go outside and smoke again, partly because he privately enjoyed seeing the change that came over the regent lord at repose, and also because as silly as it is, he wants to be more alone with Lor'themar than he can be in the close quarters of a library or theater surrounded by guards. Lor'themar smiles at him, and they go out into the gardens, light two pipes, and lie in the grass and talk aimlessly just as before. It seems as good a time as any to discuss an early departure.

"I'm going to leave Silvermoon a few days early, if it's all right with you," Anduin tells Lor'themar respectfully. "Halve my visit, actually. I'll leave Saturday morning."

Lor'themar looks surprised, then annoyed, his ears dipping back. "Rommath's been at you," Lor'themar says a little irritably. "Pay him no mind, I'll speak to him--"

"No, please don't," Anduin says. "The grand magister has a point, a good point. It's risky for me to be here for the measure of gain involved, and it was a selfish, thoughtless request for me to have made. I'm not sorry, because your home has been a wonderful place to visit, but I think I should cut the trip short."

Lor'themar's silent for a moment, his face turning unreadable. "All right, if that is your wish."

"I've loved every minute I've been here," Anduin says sincerely.

Lor'themar's lips curve in a simulation of one of his normal polite smiles, but the expression looks grim. He comes across as distracted and tense thereafter, and the topic seems to ruin his appetite for their meandering conversations.

Later, after Lor'themar and the guards walk him back to his rooms, Anduin plays another few card games with Elenos, who flirts with him outrageously. Every topic of conversation with him is an opportunity for double entendre. 

When Anduin says he's tired, Elenos immediately takes his leave, every inch his dedicated servant. For all that Anduin's nursing a still-tender heart over Wrathion and an impossible crush on Lor'themar, he can't help but contemplate Elenos, who seems so genuinely interested in bedding him Anduin wonders if he has a fetish for humans. Or perhaps Elenos and the female elf who'd been naked have some kind of wager going. Anduin's more sure than ever, though, that he doesn't want to have sex with a courtesan, female or male either.

Still, he doesn't mind looking.

* * *

The next morning, Anduin's seated on the same teak bench with Rommath in the bathhouse, in the same huge and mostly empty room. Yet conversation comes easier. Anduin wonders whether Lor'themar berated him regardless of Anduin's own request that he leave the issue alone. Though he rather doubts whether a lecture of some kind from Lor'themar would much change Rommath's behavior. Rommath must just be pleased he's agreed to leave early.

Anduin ignores the backhanded compliments and half-affronts that crop up now and then. Rommath is, he decides, simply a caustic person, sarcastic and what his father would call sassy. But overall, the grand magister seems to be making an effort today, and most of his words are neutral. He doesn't feel like he's won Rommath over, but at least they're exchanging civil words. They're having an inconsequential conversation about the quarries from which the elves acquire their white-beige stone when Anduin sees Elenos pass by alongside two other elves.

Elenos is naked like everyone else and carrying a towel, and as he passes, he catches Anduin's gaze, and his smile sparkles. Anduin smiles back, keeping his eyes up until Elenos has gone by. After Elenos has passed, he allows his gaze to drop a couple of feet. Elenos has a shapely backside, to say the least, and the sight gives Anduin pause. This young elf wanted to have sex with him, was ready to undress and lie down and let Anduin fuck him. Anduin's glad to have a towel wrapped loosely round his waist, though the concealment isn't as thorough as he would like.

"You're too young to harbor regrets," Rommath says, watching him.

Anduin's head nearly swivels. "Excuse me?"

"You look like a boy who regrets a decision," Rommath says. Rommath is, at least, looking steadily at his face rather than his groin, and thank the Light for that.

Anduin glances at Elenos again, who's distracted now far across the room, engaged in conversation with the elf sitting next to him. Anduin turns his gaze back to Rommath, staring at him. "Did you... are you the person sending me nightly visitors?"

Rommath scoffs, as though he's faintly insulted even to be asked. "No. One of Lor'themar's people arranges for evening company for guests. However, given your high birth, your young age, and our concerns for your safety, I believe Lor'themar spoke with your companions personally."

"Then how did you know--"

"Little stays quiet in the high court." Rommath leans back against the teak and shuts his eyes.

Though he can't stop himself turning slightly pink, Anduin composes himself. "Stormwind is much the same. Gossip is a constant."

"Sometimes I think myself the only creature in the city capable of keeping my tongue behind my teeth," Rommath says.

"I don't care for it overmuch either," Anduin continues calmly. "But you're wrong, I don't have any regrets."

Rommath opens his wise old eyes and looks at him. "I will admit to some curiosity as to whether you intend to continue on... 'without regrets.'" Rommath makes it an innuendo. "I can't imagine your father would be pleased to have a son so devout he declines to produce an heir."

"It's not because of my faith, I haven't take a vow or anything." The words come out sounding more defensive than he means for them to, and so he takes a breath before he continues. "I just don't want to bed someone I hardly know, who's being paid to be with me. Surely that can't be all that strange."

"I don't find it strange at all," Rommath says. "Though I rather think you should seize the day. Find someone to love or marry. Humans don't live terribly long."

From anyone else, his final sentence might have come across as a threat, but Rommath seems too apathetic to threaten anyone. His tone is weary.

"You make it sound as though it's easy," Anduin responds a bit more peevishly than he means to. Rommath seems to have that effect on him.

"I know it's not," Rommath says, as limp and tired as the slump of his shoulders.

Anduin wavers for a moment.

Between--among--Archbishop Benedictus, about whom Anduin believes the murmured rumors, Lady Katrana, and now Kairozdormu, and with Genn and Baine and Velen decisively marked down on the other side, Anduin thinks he's turning out to be a pretty decent judge of character. He likes people and gets good feelings about them, and he dislikes other people and they turn out to be monsters. 

He's not sure why he feels like confiding in the grand magister of all people. Perhaps because Rommath, while he comes across as many things--thoughtful and introverted, opinionated and rude, at once sinister and trustworthy, even a bit fatherly--truly seems like he does not care one whit. Anduin feels, oddly enough, like he can trust Rommath.

"There was someone," Anduin confesses, swallowing, a bit shocked at his own rash decision to open himself to scrutiny. "Someone I liked who wasn't interested."

The same elven child as the day before comes into the chamber to offer them items from his plate of small goods. Rommath holds up a black-nailed hand to indicate he doesn't want anything, but Anduin accepts a cup of water, because his mouth feels suddenly dry.

"That's never pleasant," Rommath says when the young attendant has moved along, and Anduin sees his left hand twitch against the outside of his thigh. Rommath seems to be left-handed.

Anduin drinks his water in two large gulps. Half-consciously he mirrors Rommath's own language, a speech pattern Anduin's noticed. "'Not pleasant' doesn't convey it so well as 'unconsummated tram wreck.'"

Rommath snorts quietly at that, and they sit in silence until Rommath speaks. "You're in excellent company, though I know that's rarely of any comfort. Even the greatest and most beloved among us aren't immune to unrequited feelings." His hand drifts forward along the teak between them, as though he were about to reach for something a few inches off the edge of the bench. "A thousand lovers can worship you and your heart can still be broken."

Anduin nods once in acknowledgement of these truths, and he wonders who Rommath loved, or whether he's even talking about himself.

Rommath casts a thoughtful look at him. "Was your prospective paramour wed, disinterested in men, or simply not taken with you?"

"I think..." Anduin blinks at this compact assessment of the possibilities for what went wrong. "I think maybe... fourth option, 'wanted something else more.'" He wonders if this short statement gives away too much, if Rommath with his obvious intelligence might peel away the words to tell Wrathion's identity, and his stomach turns. He's trusting a great deal, here, and he's not certain why. Maybe because in a way, it's a relief to talk about it, and since Wrathion left, he has no one he can talk to. Even in confession with High Priestess Laurena he's been reluctant to speak of what happened with Wrathion.

Sensing perhaps that this admission has been a daunting confidence for him, Rommath gives him a shrewd look but doesn't hazard a guess, and Anduin relaxes.

"Are you married?" Anduin asks him.

"I am a widower twice over."

"I'm sorry," Anduin says, meaning it. Rommath does not seem like a happy man.

Rommath nods, and thereafter they sit on the teak bench in silence.

* * * 

An hour later the four of them sit in the parlor of Lor'themar's office, away from his dishearteningly covered desk, and discuss what they should do that day.

"I thought tonight we might show him the Row," Halduron says a trifle mischievously.

Lor'themar's eyebrows rise into his pale hair, and Rommath frowns. "Yes, I'm sure King Varian will be ecstatic when we return his son full of stab wounds," Rommath says.

"Oh, you exaggerate," Halduron says.

"Only a little," Lor'themar replies.

"It's a part of the city as any other," Halduron says. "The Row has the best night life, deny it."

"We're not showing him the criminal element, you reprobate," Lor'themar says, and there's finality in his voice, but the insult is affectionate.

Rommath rolls his eyes. "I have work to do," he says disgustedly. "Get him killed and I'll set you on fire myself, and save Wrynn the trouble," he adds to Halduron as he teleports out of the suite, his staff thumping against the floor before he vanishes.

"The grand magister's in a fine mood," Halduron observes after the last of the ice-blue teleportation magic disperses. "What did you two do this morning?"

"Just the bathhouse," Anduin says, not sure what exactly is being implied here.

"I think you must be growing on him," Halduron says.

* * *

"Shall we spend the morning in a pleasure house?" Halduron suggests when they're alone and strolling on hawkstriders down the languid, sunny streets. "Elantelle's has the most beautiful women you've ever seen."

Anduin glances at him, startled even as he knows he shouldn't be. "No, thank you. I don't want to hold you back, but that's not for me."

"'Not for you'?" Halduron says disbelievingly. "Unless that bell crushed your balls, trust me, you'll find something that pleases," Halduron promises, but then he seems to comes to a realization. "Oh, do you have a sweetheart?"

Anduin shakes his head. "No."

"Then... tell me what you like," Halduron suggests. "Redheads? Brunettes?"

Anduin shakes his head again.

"They have men, if you prefer that," Halduron says. He looks upwards as though for inspiration from the horizon. "We could set you up with an elven man with a huge cock and an ass you could bounce a gold piece off of."

"Ranger-General, are you offering to be mine?" Anduin teases. Mostly he doesn't want to have this conversation in front of his guards, but Halduron seems oblivious to his discomfort. 

Halduron cackles, gleeful. "Well. Certainly I can see why you would think I mean me."

"The truth is, I'm just... not interested in a pleasure house."

"What man your age isn't interested in a pleasure house?" Halduron says, as if this deeply puzzles him and he's struggling to make sense of it. "Are you betrothed?"

"No, not betrothed." His discomfort is only growing. "Come here," he says abruptly, because the conversation has gone far enough in the open. Halduron draws closer on his hawkstrider's back, close enough to whisper or murmur back and forth. "This is kind of private, to me," Anduin whispers into Halduron's ear, wondering how far he can trust the ranger-general. "But I want to be with someone I at least know and like, who likes me back. Not a prostitute."

"The prostitutes would like you, I promise," Halduron whispers.

"I wouldn't feel good about it afterwards," Anduin whispers back.

"My," Halduron says aloud, and then he lowers his voice and puts his mouth back to Anduin's ear. "You're more traditionally human than you let on," Halduron answers softly. "Just so you know, I feel silly whispering about this."

Anduin turns his head and puts his hand on Halduron's shoulder to steady them together as he leans again to Halduron's ear. "Well, it's a big deal to me, so I appreciate your discretion. It's not something I want to talk about in front of a hundred guards."

"So it's true then about your courtesans, then," Halduron whispers. "You turned them away."

Anduin frowns. How many people are intimately aware of the happenings in his bedchamber here? "Yes, and seeing as how everyone in the city seems to know exactly how it went, I'm very glad I did."

"Oh, not everyone," Halduron tells him quietly, shrugging. "And it's only the fact you turned them away that makes it worth mention or of interest to anyone. I thought it was an absurd lie, for the record."

"Be that as it may," Anduin says in his normal voice, dropping his hand, and Halduron draws a foot away on his hawkstrider. "I don't mind spending the day in my room, or going to a brothel and just--staying downstairs," Anduin offers, but Halduron dismisses this suggestion with a wave.

"Let's go for that swim we never took," Halduron says.

* * *

Halduron takes him through some formal gardens west of the Spire to a pool half the size of the huge pool in the bathhouse. On their way they pass a few elves, but none are swimming, and the area is abandoned. Gardens surround the pool, flowers and grasses, but there are no large bushes, trellises or shrubs large enough to block the view of the water. The pool lies in shade from a canopy of stone, Anduin sees, a thin slab resting atop four pillars.

"You can stay here," Halduron says to his guards, gesturing to the benches set a short distance from the pool. "I won't drown him, I promise."

Halduron's vow does not seem to inspire confidence in Anduin's guards, but Anduin smiles at them reassuringly and nods. "We'll stay in sight." He's unsure for a second whether his guards will agree to grant him this level of privacy, a good fifteen foot distance from the edge of the pool, but Miller purses her lips and finally bows her head. The distance isn't farther than they've allotted him in the bathhouse, but here he's out in the open where there's a greater general perception of danger.

"Sit, relax," Halduron says to the guards, and Captain Miller seems even less pleased by this suggestion.

He and Halduron stroll the rest of the way down the path to the pool. There Halduron shucks off his clothes matter-of-factly. Anduin hesitates for a second over his smallclothes, but Halduron removes his own seemingly without a second thought, so Anduin strips down too.

"Don't forget to wear comfortable clothes tomorrow," Halduron says. "The trip to Quel'Danas is long."

"I won't," Anduin replies. "But I appreciate the reminder."

When they're naked, Halduron looks him up and down so openly, Anduin feels free to stare. Halduron is startlingly well-endowed. Anduin can't imagine him getting any larger erect, though he definitely isn't going to ask. 

"Garrosh really mangled you," Halduron says.

"That he did."

Halduron grins at him, then turns and dives neatly into the water with hardly a splash. The water is clear, the stone light, but Anduin can't be sure of the depth, so he enters more cautiously, with a muted, minimal little jump, feet first. Regardless of what Halduron does, he's not going to dive headlong into a pool he can't tell the depth of.

But the pool turns out to go far down, at least fifteen feet, and Halduron comes to the surface and bobs in the water a few feet away from him.

"I should let you know," Anduin says. "I'm going to be leaving early. On Saturday morning."

"I heard," Halduron says disapprovingly. "Caving in to Rommath. I'm quite put out with you."

Anduin shrugs. "He isn't wrong, it wasn't very considerate of me to come here. I pose a risk to your city." He gestures to the bed of pink roses and bluebells on one side of the pool, swaying in the breeze, and to the towers rising into the skies beyond. "How can I put this in danger? It's more irresponsible than I want to be."

"We've kept you safe so far, no?" Halduron gives him a sly look. "Leaving early says you don't trust in our ability to protect you." 

"I think it says I care about the effect I might have on people I respect."

"We wouldn't have had you here if Lor'themar hadn't felt sure we could keep you safe," Halduron tells him, a little coaxing.

"I know," Anduin says. "And so I'll stay until Saturday. But I think that should be it. Better safe than sorry." He realizes, as he says it, how much he sounds like his father.

* * *

That night finds him and Lor'themar in a different area of the garden, and Lor'themar's back in the mood to chat. "You knew Kairozdormu personally, did you not?" Lor'themar asks, and he takes a long drag on his pipe. The herbs they're smoking are subtly different tonight, still flavorsome but with more pronounced notes of spice.

Anduin nods. "I did. We met on the Timeless Isle, in Pandaria." Anduin takes a puff off his own pipe. Though he has no plans to keep up the habit once he returns home, he doesn't feel quite so silly smoking it anymore.

"What did you make of him?"

Anduin pauses, remembering his father's warnings again. Yet this information seems harmless, nothing to be protective or defensive about. All his evening conversations with Lor'themar seem aimless, the topics mostly born from Lor'themar's evident curiosity, though Anduin asks questions of his own here and there.

"I didn't like him," Anduin admits.

"No? What turned you off?" Lor'themar asks.

Anduin has to think about this, too. _He was all over Wrathion like white on sticky rice._ "I didn't like the way he smiled," he answers finally.

"Hm." Lor'themar glances at him with an amused smile of his own. "Did he have bad teeth?"

Anduin shakes his head, because it's not a joking matter to him. What Kairoz did could have killed him, and did kill his alternate timeline counterpart, and Jaina almost died too that day.

Lor'themar seems to pick up on Anduin's sober feelings on the subject, for he turns a bit more serious. "Do you often judge people thusly?" Lor'themar asks.

"No," Anduin answers. "Just Kairoz. Did you have an opinion about him?" Anduin asks it only to be polite. Why they're talking about Kairoz is beyond him, really.

"Only that I don't like such a treacherous creature wearing the face of one of my people," Lor'themar says. "Not that I have the least say about what guise any dragon wears. But I didn't know him."

Anduin suddenly wonders with dread if this conversation is a prelude to discussion of Wrathion, but Lor'themar only says, "I do wonder what sort of trouble he and Garrosh will stir up wherever they went. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of them."

"Likely not." Truth be told, Anduin wonders far more when he'll see Wrathion once more. Wrathion certainly seemed to think they'd meet again, and he was in a position to know.

"Halduron mentioned I'm staying in the quarters used by the former ambassador of the Forsaken," Anduin says to change the subject.

Lor'themar makes an uncharacteristically inelegant snorting noise, half a giggle. "Ah yes, Notley. Calvin Notley. He was an ordeal. What did Halduron tell you?"

"He said the ambassador didn't remember where he was most of the time."

Lor'themar blows out a mouthful of smoke. "Yes... that is true, but it was far more than that. He was half mad at least. Sylvanas sent him to us as a joke, I'm quite sure of it." He turns his head quickly and his remaining eye fixes on Anduin in the dim light. "Ah-- please tell me you haven't found anything distressing of his."

"What?" Anduin raises a confused eyebrow. "No?"

Lor'themar sighs, apparently relieved. 

"We had to take the room apart after he left--and the reason for his departure is its own story--and we discovered he'd carved holes into the walls and put pieces of corpses in the gaps, then covered them back up and hidden them with enchantments." Lor'themar takes a long drag from his pipe, then gestures with it towards the sky. "We believe some of the fingers and toes were his own. Some were elven, though we have no reason to think he took them from anyone living." He glances at Anduin as if for his reaction. Anduin keeps his face nonchalant, though in truth he's unsettled.

He's heard more than one priest express the belief that the existence of the forsaken is anathema, an abomination unto the Light. Anduin is hesitant to condemn an entire race, even a race of the undead, a number of whom possess an apparent fondness for creating life-ending plagues. Not to mention their predilection for eating human flesh and the flesh of other sentient races. And the Light burns them to the touch. No, Anduin can't deny he finds the forsaken disturbing. The idea of being allied with them is disquieting at best, and a deranged ambassador seems like insult atop injury.

Yet he thinks again of Kiryn in the Jade Forest, dead Kiryn whose face he never saw, who chose to spare his life rather than take it from him.

"Does Sylvanas often make jokes at your expense?" The question verges on the political, which Anduin had vowed to steer away from, but the idea of high-stakes political pranking is so far from what he thought he knew about Sylvanas, he can't help but ask. Anduin feels a little bit too warm, and he tugs on his collar.

"No. A one-time incident, only." Lor'themar draws again on his pipe, then blows two smoke rings into the air. "We're a more playful people than we might seem to an outsider, but no, Sylvanas isn't one of us any longer." Lor'themar casts a thoughtful eye at him. "I suspect for those who've died and come back, life itself becomes the joke."

Lor'themar suddenly looks at him sharply. His eye widens, and he puts a hand to his mouth briefly, covering his aghast expression with his long, scarred fingers. Lor'themar sits up, reaches for Anduin's arm, and says quietly and intensely, "Anduin, to your rooms. Right now."

"Uh... okay," Anduin agrees, a little uncertain. His first instinct is to glance around for assassins. He's let his guard down, which he should never do, Bolvar and his father trained him better than to be taken by surprise. But Lor'themar doesn't call their guards. Anduin lets Lor'themar pull him to his feet. "I have my hearthstone," he says, confused. "For my room. Should I use it?"

"No," Lor'themar says, and Lor'themar moves to stand right in front of him and whisper into his ear. "In fact, give it to me." Lor'themar's speaking rapidly and behaving strangely, but Anduin finds the hearthstone in his pocket and goes to surrender it. Lor'themar hardly even lets Anduin's hand emerge from his pocket before he's seized the hearthstone and invisibly tucked it away somewhere.

"Are you okay?" Anduin asks, because Lor'themar's face is ashen.

"Yes, fine. Here, let's go." Lor'themar angles his body so that he's standing in front of Anduin as they close the distance to their guards, blocking the others' view of Anduin as they come forward.

"What's going on?" Anduin asks. "Lor'themar. What's wrong?"

Lor'themar turns, pausing, and says into his ear, "I'll tell you in a few minutes. Just go into your suite when we get there." Lor'themar's breath tickles delightfully, and Anduin tilts his head sideways to have more of the sensation, but the regent lord moves away and when Anduin doesn't immediately follow, Lor'themar grabs his hand again and pulls him forward. Lor'themar releases Anduin's hand after a few steps, all too soon.

The walk back to the Spire is speedy, with Lor'themar shortening his long stride less than usual, forcing Anduin to move quickly, and they make the short trek in silence. Anduin's conscious of his inebriation from smoking, and he's not walking altogether straight, but it's not the place of his guards to comment, and Lor'themar seems terribly distracted, glancing at him now and then. As they walk, Anduin's thoughts drift, as they so often do, to sex, and he's picturing every elf they pass naked when he realizes he's getting hard.

Anduin looks up at Lor'themar again and runs his hand along Lor'themar's arm once, experimentally, as they walk, and Lor'themar places his hand over Anduin's. Lor'themar's hand exerts pressure, keeping Anduin's in one place, mid-forearm as though he's only steadying his tipsy guest, but effectively keeping Anduin's hand from wandering any further as they head inside the Spire. And Anduin's hand wants to wander. His cock grows rock hard as he looks at Lor'themar in profile, at his not-quite-straight nose and his generous mouth. The divided scar marring the left side of his face is not visible from his right side.

"Goodnight, Anduin," Lor'themar says aloud when they reach the double doors of Anduin's suite. Lor'themar had said he would explain, but Anduin can't quickly gather the words to ask, and so he only nods. He tries once more to run his hand up Lor'themar's arm, but Lor'themar smoothly disentangles and extricates himself.

Anduin stumbles into his rooms, leaving his guards outside and shutting the door. He's achingly hard now, and steadily leaking. He can feel where his smallclothes are wet, but instead of being uncomfortable it's only more arousing. He needs to come. He staggers through the parlor but doesn't quite make it all the way to his bedchamber, his gait unsteady. He leans against a chaise and starts pulling at his clothes. It's difficult not to be naked right now, to be confined by several layers of garments, useless, frustrating things. And yet his coordination is off. He claws at his tabard, then gives up to reach underneath and fumble with his belt, managing to unbuckle it and get his pants open so he can stroke his cock--

\--and suddenly Lor'themar appears out of thin air in his parlor eight feet away. Lor'themar freezes upon seeing him, nearly recoiling. "Sweet Sunwell," Lor'themar says, single green eye wide. "Anduin, I am so sorry--"

"What did you--" is all he manages before his mind starts feeding him imagery. In his eyes Lor'themar's face and body seem to flare in the light from the blue crystals of the chandelier, and then Anduin is picturing Lor'themar under him, lying on his stomach on the bed, moaning. Anduin would like to pull back that perfectly kept ponytail while he thrusts. Then the image flips and he's the one being bent over the bed, Lor'themar driving into him from behind, filling him in a way he's thought about but never experienced. Anduin isn't sure which scenario he wants more. The images come like waking dreams, he can see every subtle movement, every line of their bodies. He leans against the door frame and almost loses his balance. His cock is free and so hard, and he fists it in rapid, stripping strokes even as he's trying to stop, even as he and Lor'themar stare at each other _and he's looking at Lor'themar and jerking off_. Anduin's not that bothered by this shockingly, shamefully uncontrolled behavior, but he understands instinctively he will be later, and so with a heroic effort he stops pulling at his cock.

"Did you give me--did you drug me?" Anduin gets out, betrayed and confused, and he lets his tabard fall back over his hips, covering himself.

Looking thunderstruck, Lor'themar automatically reaches out a hand to him, then seems to think better of it. He puts both hands to the sides of his face as though he's seeing something horrifying. "An aphrodisiac. We smoked it together, an absolute accident. I had no intention--"

Anduin's mind whirls. Aphrodisiac... he's been given an aphrodisiac. Lor'themar keeps talking, but he stops listening.

Knowing these feelings are artificial, he should be able to control them... but he finds he can't. He puts his hand on his tabard over his cock and begins vertically rubbing, then slips his hand back under, unable to stop himself. His eyes travel to Lor'themar's broad, flat-muscled chest. Clumsily Anduin jerks himself, dragging at his foreskin, gasping, and he wants, wants, wants...

"Are you not...?" Anduin gestures feebly at Lor'themar's body with his free hand.

"The effect upon longtime users is diminished," Lor'themar says, though Anduin sees under the glow of his eyes that the darker green of his pupils are dilated, and when Anduin's eyes flicker down, he can see through Lor'themar's pants that he too is hard. Lor'themar, however, is not futilely trying to rip his clothes off, nor does he seem frantic to stroke and thrust his cock the way Anduin feels.

At first Lor'themar seems unsure about approaching him, but after a moment of them both standing there, Anduin staring at him and jerking himself off frantically, Lor'themar moves authoritatively to Anduin's side, taking his free arm. Anduin tries to turn in his direction, but Lor'themar points him towards the bed, guiding him forward. Anduin's skin burns where Lor'themar's touching his arm and his back, even through his clothing. 

"I am so sorry," Lor'themar says again.

"Mm," Anduin says, still stroking himself. 

Lor'themar looks a mix of horrified, concerned and guilty as he gets Anduin to the circular bed. "I wanted to at least partially explain, and to make sure you're all right," he repeats. "I'll get someone to take care of you--"

Lor'themar breaks off, with a slight intake of air, as Anduin lets go of his cock long enough to turn forcefully in Lor'themar's grip, his hands finding Lor'themar's tunic and jerking, hoping to tumble them both into the bed. Lor'themar's stronger than him, though, and more stable, and Anduin fails to get him off-balance. But Anduin doesn't care about the bed, not really, standing or sitting or lying down, none of that matters. He only wants to kiss Lor'themar, grope him, free every inch of his own burning skin, covered in stupid clothing, and get his hand back on his cock. He'd like even more to get his cock inside Lor'themar's mouth, to slide right between those wide, sensual lips and fuck his mouth. He grinds his hips into Lor'themar's thigh, and Lor'themar starts to pull away, looking guilt-stricken. "I'm so sorry, Anduin, I--"

"No," Anduin interrupts, almost angry, and he twists his hands in Lor'themar's shirt. He pulls tightly on the silken fabric, more demanding and aggressive than he's ever dreamt of being, and he tries to draw Lor'themar's face down to his, to kiss Lor'themar and make his meaning clear. Lor'themar's long fingers close around Anduin's wrists as if to move his hands away, but he only holds Anduin still, looking at him helplessly.

"Please," Anduin begs. He edges closer, feeling more sexually impatient than he ever has in his life, well beyond want and far into a need as desperate as thirst. He shifts his body close enough to unevenly thrust his hips against Lor'themar's warm silk-clad thigh again, humping him in a way that would be mortifying if Anduin could possibly feel shame about this, which he can't. But it's not enough; he needs more friction than the soft, slippery fabric can offer, even with Lor'themar's hard musculature behind it. If he were stronger he could take Lor'themar by force, but he's at the regent lord's mercy.

"Please," Anduin repeats, the most desperate pleading of his life, staring Lor'themar in the face. He's starved for touch, thirsting for hands on his cock, and if he doesn't find satisfaction soon he might go mad.

Lor'themar looks torn, tortured even, for a few seconds before he relents, releasing Anduin's wrists, tangling his hands in Anduin's long hair and leaning down to press his mouth to Anduin's in earnest.

But once he has Lor'themar's attention the way he wants, Anduin feels zero interest in kissing. Lor'themar places a hand on his cock, encircling him and squeezing firmly, and it's better, much better than kissing, more what he needs. Anduin turns his head from Lor'themar's mouth and sighs as those long, clever, calloused fingers begin to stroke him. Lor'themar seems to know precisely how to touch him.

Anduin thrusts into his hand and almost loses his balance. Lor'themar steadies him against the side of the bed with his free hand. He's on the verge, and he comes in no time at all.

But even when he stiffens in Lor'themar's embrace and spurts between them, riding the ecstasy that ends far too soon, his arousal doesn't go away, and he never softens. Lor'themar continues to stroke him through his orgasm, but then he lets go, rubbing Anduin's hip with his hand. Anduin wants more, and he puts his hands on Lor'themar's shoulders, pushing him down to indicate his desire.

Lor'themar goes willingly to his knees, but he puts his mouth to the tip of Anduin's cock more tentatively than Anduin wants. Looking down, Anduin grabs Lor'themar's ears and draws his face forward. Lor'themar jerks back when he chokes, gagging briefly. Tears form in Lor'themar's eyes when his ears are pulled. But he recovers from gagging quickly, and then he grasps Anduin's cock in two fingers and a thumb, to stroke back and forth as he sucks, preventing Anduin from forcing his head all the way down again. But Anduin finds he has no need to. He melts into the sensations, his whole world narrowed to his cock and the hot wetness as he fucks Lor'themar's mouth and Lor'themar sucks and strokes him.

When Anduin approaches orgasm a second time, he pulls Lor'themar's ears forward again. Lor'themar makes a whining noise but manages to control the apparent urge to yank away this time, and only coughs around hard flesh as his mouth is filled. Lor'themar's trembling, but all his efforts seem to be going to keeping his head down as Anduin wishes. Anduin thrusts once, then twice to his completion, and Lor'themar's closing throat tightens around the head of his cock. It's good, and Anduin lets Lor'themar pull away when he's mostly finished spurting. Lor'themar lowers his head and coughs more into his hand for a few moments.

"Want inside you," Anduin attempts to say, but the words come out muttered. Lor'themar gazes up at him, looking alarmed and even a little despairing. Anduin can tell even through the sex haze he's in that Lor'themar is distressed, but Lor'themar spits into the hand he coughed into, then reaches back. Anduin watches with interest as Lor'themar pushes the back of his pants down, keeping his palm cupped at an angle.

Lor'themar looks like he's on his way to his own execution as he unbuttons his shirt and kicks off his boots, but Anduin finds he can't care very much. He needs to come again and Lor'themar is there, warm and beautiful and cooperating. Anduin tries to undress himself, but his hands are almost useless, incapable of following directions, all thumbs.

Lor'themar works efficiently in disrobing them both, peeling off Anduin's tabard and removing his shirt, getting Anduin sitting on the bed and kneeling to pull off his boots. He draws Anduin's feet up onto the bed with his pants still mostly on, then, gripping Anduin's pants and smallclothes at the waistband, he bends to lick at the head of Anduin's cock. Anduin thrusts up for more and realizes when Lor'themar takes his mouth away that he was only getting Anduin to lift his hips so as to more easily remove his last two garments. For a moment he's angry again, angry with want, but Lor'themar climbs on top of him then, pacifying him with the promise of what's coming.

Lor'themar reaches back briefly again and holds Anduin's cock straight and upright as he brings his hips slowly down, his face strained. Anduin tries futilely to thrust up, for with surprising force Lor'themar holds his pelvis still against the bed.

Lor'themar pauses before bearing down again. Time dilates and Anduin's impatient, but he does end up buried in Lor'themar's body, an exquisite tight heat pushing and pulling at his most sensitive flesh. The clamping sensation is incredible. Lor'themar closes his good eye as he moves up and down, back and forth, and he takes his own half-hard cock in his hand.

Anduin grinds up into Lor'themar, and Lor'themar rides him until Anduin comes a third time. He manages to get on top of Lor'themar briefly after that, but his movements are clumsy, his coordination as badly compromised as his ability to speak. He collapses on Lor'themar, still blindly thrusting his hips, but it was less work and more pleasure the other way. "Over," he tries to say, but the word comes out insensible. His tongue isn't working properly. Fortunately, Lor'themar appears to understand anyway and rearranges them. Lor'themar spits judiciously on Anduin's cock a couple of times as they shift position. Then Lor'themar sits astride his cock again, taking it, snapping his hips back and forth, and it's golden. Anduin comes again and stays hard. He's fucking Lor'themar forever.

At some point, Anduin passes out. 

* * *

When Anduin wakes up, he's alone. For a moment he's disoriented, and then disorderly memories of the previous night come flooding back. He reels from sheer memory as he rolls over in bed, not with horror or anger or sorrow or even embarrassment, but simply overwhelmed that ... that... should have come to pass. He's naked and dehydrated, his mouth feels cottony and dry, and he gropes for the pitcher of water on the table beside his bed.

He's no longer aroused. His cock feels a bit chafed and sore, in fact, almost like it would get when he was fifteen and jerking off constantly. His head hurts as though he's hung over, taking him back to the aftermath of the time he let Wrathion talk him into that evening of heavy drinking. He'd lost count of the number of ales he'd knocked back, and then they'd each had shots of whiskey, and intoxication had made him relatively bold. He'd touched Wrathion, taken his arm, patted his hand, clutched his shoulder. He never touched Wrathion. He'd vomited later that night in his room and the next morning as well, comforted only by the knowledge that at least he hadn't embarrassed himself by trying to do anything more in his blur of idiotic liquid courage.

Last night--he doesn't quite remember the explanation for how that happened, though he thinks he remembers Lor'themar explaining. He knows he was drugged. He remembers the sex much better, the bodily sensations, Lor'themar sucking him off, then riding his cock at his mumbled request. The rubbing of their chests together, sweaty, when he was briefly on top of Lor'themar, his face pressed into the bed in the hollow of Lor'themar's shoulder.

Calling the Light forth, he presses his fingertips into his temples, and the intensity of the ache there eases.

His own semen--or Lor'themar's?--has dried on his sheets and groin and stomach, and he's itchy in places he didn't know he had. Rommath will probably be by soon to go to the bathhouse. He drinks a large cup of water in three long draughts to slake his thirst. He refills his cup and pants for air before he drinks half of a second cup.

Rising, he dips a washcloth in the basin of clean water and swabs himself down before he dresses in yesterday's clothes. He rakes a comb through his long, tangled hair. Breakfast is brought to him, and Rommath knocks on his door in due time. Anduin feels like any passerby will be able to tell how he spent his evening just by looking at him, but Rommath gives no sign. His guards, too, show no awareness or concern.

He feels better once he's walked into the warm pool and rinsed. He and Rommath speak. Yet unsurprisingly, he only feels half present; he can scarcely take his mind off the fuzzy memories of the the night before. The memories are disjointed, but he knows he gave his virginity, drugged, to a tortured and regretful Lor'themar Theron. He abused Lor'themar, though. The whole thing feels like a dream, but he knows it happened.

* * *

Lor'themar's office door is standing open, and he has no guards present. Anduin gestures his guards to stay outside as he and Rommath enter. His heart beats faster, but he gives no outward sign. Lor'themar too acts normally, as though nothing's happened, as though nothing's changed. Yet Anduin feels Lor'themar's single eye on him keenly.

Lor'themar is dressed, Anduin supposes, for a trip, in beige leather pants and matching vest over a white shirt that can only be silk.

"Good morning, Rommath, Anduin. Are you ready to go to Quel'Danas?"

Anduin nods. "I am." His mouth is a desert.

"Very good. Rommath, will you please go find Halduron? He might be in the stables, or his quarters, or at Fyalenn's. We've had multiple small changes of plans, and I'm afraid I sent him on a wild goose chase."

Rommath gives Lor'themar an odd look, but he nods and vanishes in a flash of pale blue light. Lor'themar rises at once and gestures for Anduin to close his heavy office door, after which he comes around his desk. He's moving a bit stiffly, Anduin sees. Lor'themar sweeps the transparent, glowing-pink, faintly humming curtain in front of the door. Anduin recognizes the activation of some kind of arcane wards.

"I want to apologize, abjectly, for what you ingested last night and for what happened afterwards," Lor'themar says, leaning back against his desk. They're only a foot and a half away from each other. Lor'themar looks pale and drawn, and despite the closed door and the wards, he speaks quietly. "I take full responsibility. I hesitate to even explain what happened, because I don't want it to sound as though I'm making excuses for something inexcusable."

Anduin shifts his weight uncomfortably. "Actually, I would like to know," Anduin says. "What happened?"

Lor'themar looks at him steadily. "You were drugged," he says. "We smoked a mix of herbs that metabolizes into a strong aphrodisiac."

"Okay, I got that part. Start at the beginning," Anduin says firmly. "Please. Why did we smoke that?"

Lor'themar slightly lifts his hands, loosely cupping them, and drops them back to his thighs, a helpless gesture. "I typically smoke a combination of herbs that has a mellowing effect. That's what we've smoked together. Sometime yesterday afternoon, without my knowledge, someone who didn't know you and I have been smoking nights switched it out with an aphrodisiac blend, concentrated and enhanced." He pauses, watching Anduin's face. "A practical joke."

Anduin gazes at him. "A practical joke," he repeats, disbelieving. "Seriously?"

"Yes," Lor'themar says, voice heavy. "To a frequent smoker of it, the effect is a slow burn. You become physically aroused. Your pupils dilate. You crave the feeling of skin on skin. Concentration becomes difficult. But that is all. It would have been an annoyance for me, possibly an inconvenience. To someone new to it, smoking a strong blend like that..." Lor'themar trails off and shakes his head once. "Well, you don't need me to tell you. Unless... do you not have any memories of last night?"

"No, I remember." Anduin reddens at the memory of jerking off right in front of Lor'themar, staring at him and desperately jerking off, unable to keep his hands off himself. But he doesn't let the embarrassment that rises inside get the better of him; he'd tell anyone in his place that what happened wasn't their fault, as he knows what happened last night is not his fault. Being drugged is nothing for him to feel shame over. Still, his hands are shaking. "And who played this practical joke on you?"

"Halduron," Lor'themar says simply, a 'who else?' in his voice. He sounds sad.

Anduin dips his head an inch, his eyes widening questioningly. "Does he know what came of his... prank?"

Lor'themar shakes his head. "No, he has no idea what came of his rampant idiocy. I will be having a long talk with him of one sort or another, but I wanted to speak to you first. To know... well. To determine what must come of this."

"I see," Anduin says neutrally.

Lor'themar places his face in his hands for a moment, and when he drops them he looks extremely tired. His shoulders sag. "I was concerned about your safety in coming here. But this... I never could have dreamed. I could apologize unto eternity and it would never be enough."

"I'm okay," Anduin offers. Lor'themar seems more distraught than he himself feels, and his instinct is to reach out, to offer comfort. "I mean, it's not what I would have chosen. And I don't like that I-- used you... but I didn't get hurt, and I don't want to ruin Halduron's life over it, or yours."

Lor'themar bows his head, and when he straightens his shoulders are square again, dignified. "A grace undeserved, but I am grateful for it. Halduron will be, also."

"For my part, I'm sorry I was rough with you," Anduin says slowly.

"Please, don't apologize," Lor'themar says, looking fervently at him again. "If I'd noticed what we were smoking at the outset, this whole thing would have been avoided."

Anduin colors. "It... but you wanted to go get someone, not, uh. Manage my condition yourself."

Lor'themar gazes at him intently. "If I'd called Elenos in, I'd have sat there watching you both, because I was afraid to let you out of my sight. I didn't want to summon a healer, but I wanted to be ready to do so, because I thought you might have a seizure." Lor'themar stares at him, looking him up and down as if afraid to believe he's all right. "I wanted to get someone else because it seemed wildly inappropriate to be responsible for both drugging you and then assaulting you, which is how what transpired would look from the outside."

Anduin shakes his head. "I was drugged, and yes, I feel a little violated, but honestly it feels more like I assaulted you."

"That--that was not you, but the herbs," Lor'themar says emphatically. "The flowers of kingsblood are the base of the aphrodisiac. Male courtesans and street whores chew them to perform many times in a day. Heartblossom--"

Anduin blinks, wondering at that. He's seen no street prostitution in Silvermoon City.

"--distilled oil of Khadgar's whisker enhances the potency of both, and never having smoked it before, the assertiveness from the heartblossom was outright, ah, aggression." Lor'themar seems pained to use this word. "It's a powerful stimulant, also. You wouldn't have been able to sleep until you'd orgasmed some, or ridden it out over a period of probably hours. Unhappy hours." Lor'themar shifts his hand a few inches sideways on his desk and knocks off a stack of flat parchments. Swearing softly, he kneels to pick them up, and again Anduin sees his movements look stiff.

Anduin flushes. "How many times did I come?" He's embarrassed to inquire, but if he doesn't ask now, he never will. Bending, he starts to help Lor'themar gather his scattered paperwork. "I'm fuzzy on the end of the evening." 

"Six times, I think," Lor'themar tells him matter-of-factly, looking up from one knee. "Though by the end I'm sure they were dry. You passed out after that. I was afraid you'd overdosed and had your heart give out." Lor'themar pauses, biting his lip as he heaps the parchments together. "Those liferoot potions may have saved your life. No one starts out with a concentrated ingestion like that."

"I didn't survive Garrosh Hellscream to die from elven sex drugs, no offense," Anduin says, passing Lor'themar the last handful of pages. He feels his blush deepen, but he reminds himself: none of this is his fault. "Drugged or not, I'm sorry I was so rough with you."

"Please think nothing of it." Lor'themar shakes his head as they both straighten and stand, and he sets the now messier pile of parchments back on his desk, his eyes on them vacantly. "Under other circumstances... I might have enjoyed myself if not for the overwhelming guilt before, during, and afterwards."

Anduin looks up, sensing an in. Even off the cuff, it's quite a statement. "You might have enjoyed yourself because you were drugged too?" Anduin asks carefully.

"Well, that, and--you." Lor'themar hesitates, studying him, then flashes a small smile, one that fades quickly. "You are exceedingly young, and my guest, and I would never have violated propriety or your father's trust by propositioning you, but I won't pretend I haven't noticed you're very attractive," he says delicately.

A smile grows across Anduin's face. "I think you're gorgeous," he says, as blunt as his father stating a fact over the war table, and Lor'themar smiles back, the lines of his visible eye crinkling, amused or doubtful or perhaps both. "So you'd have thought about doing that with me anyway, sober, but for... but for honor?"

Lor'themar hesitates again. "Something like that," he says finally.

"Well." Anduin's stomach slowly flip-flops, but he's always been the kind of person to go after what he wants. _Until Wrathion_ , says a little voice inside, but that was because it was Wrathion, and even there, maybe holding back had been a mistake. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. He's told himself he wouldn't shy away if he had a second chance, though he doesn't know if that is true. "It was my first experience," he admits, looking at the floor before raising his eyes back to Lor'themar.

Lor'themar's mouth makes a grim line. "I feared as much."

Anduin shakes his head, dismissing the impending apology the way Velen does. He keeps his voice carefully modulated, pressureless, yet inviting. "But I wouldn't mind having another, hopefully better one. Since we've already violated propriety, would you want to again, substance-free?"

Lor'themar's face does not noticeably change, but Anduin perceives caution and a new thoughtfulness in his single eye, and he makes no immediate answer.

"Or is this the part where you manage my expectations?" Anduin forces his voice to stay light. "I'm not trying to blackmail you," he assures Lor'themar quickly, because that suddenly occurs to him too. "I assume what you want here is my silence, for your sake and for Halduron's, and I can offer you that either way. I was just wondering... if you would want to."

Lor'themar is silent another moment, and Anduin reads into it.

"You don't want to again, it was a mistake, it's all right," Anduin says in more of a rush than he means to. "I understand. I'm so sorry I hurt you."

"No." A frown crosses Lor'themar's beautiful, maimed face. "No, no. I think you misunderstand. The issue is--" Lor'themar rubs his short beard with one knuckle, looking a bit uncomfortable. "--we could again, but given the situation with our disparate positions and ages and sides in this war, world politics being what they are--nothing long-term could ultimately come of further intimacy."

Anduin mentally deciphers that. "So you're saying we could have a fling while I'm here, but nothing more?"

"A fling. Yes, if you like." Lor'themar looks at him, earnest and a little regretful before that same small smile flits across his features. "Yes, we could, despite it being astonishingly inappropriate."

Anduin lifts his eyebrows dubiously. "More inappropriate than anyone else?" He's thinking of Wrathion, at first. Given the choice between him having sex with Wrathion and him having sex with Lor'themar, Anduin's certain his father would have a coronary but ultimately decide Lor'themar the lesser of two evils. "More so than random courtesans I've never met before who just poof, appear in my bed? At least I know you."

"I am your host and many times your age," Lor'themar says, his face grave. "Elenos and Saraina are, if not your exact age, much closer to it."

"I've always fared better with people older than me," Anduin says, trying to make it a joke.

Lor'themar crosses his arms over his chest almost self-defensively, deep in thought, and he speaks absently. "During our negotiations I came to know and admire your father, and he showed a truly remarkable amount of trust in letting you come here. So yes, I would say an affair would be awe-inspiringly inappropriate."

"I thought your people didn't care about appropriateness," Anduin counters, tilting his head back.

Lor'themar looks up, unfolding his arms and coming out of his thoughtfulness. "We care," Lor'themar says, rather primly. "Whoever told you the sin'dorei don't care about what's proper was lying or flat-out misinformed. Our conventions may differ from yours, but we have our lines and we toe them."

Anduin narrows his eyes, assessing what he's learned here. "So are you more worried about my father finding out, or your own people?"

"You are shockingly perceptive," Lor'themar says, his manner still casual, and Anduin almost expects him to cap it off with 'for a human,' but Lor'themar stops there, studying him. "Both. I know it wouldn't be your father's first or even second time storming an impossible stronghold on your account. For me personally..." Lor'themar seems to be choosing his words carefully again. "I hope you won't take offense, but the fact is the appearance would be me taking advantage of an appallingly young man."

"No one will ever hear a word of it from my lips," Anduin promises. He's had only the one friendship deep and close enough to share personal confidences, but he can keep a secret. He's kept plenty from his father over the years. "I especially don't see any need for my father to know," he adds hastily. "But... truly, it's because you want to?" He doesn't think Lor'themar is humoring him in exchange for his silence, but going just by the politics of the past year, Lor'themar's clearly somewhat accomplished at deception.

"I can see why even Garrosh liked you," Lor'themar says dryly, but he relaxes. He still seems hesitant, but he reaches out and takes Anduin's now shoulder-length hair in both hands, threading his fingers through. The motion is soothing, for there's a lot of hair to touch now, and Anduin closes his eyes for a moment.

"There are many eyes in this city," Lor'themar goes on, his voice low. "My entering your suite through the courtesans' entrance repeatedly would raise questions and more. Already a bribe has been involved. If it turns into blackmail..." Lor'themar trails off, shaking his head.

Anduin's heart beats a little faster: Lor'themar wants to bed him again. "I can be discreet."

"I should hope so. It is the better part of valor," Lor'themar murmurs.

Anduin starts to speak, but Lor'themar puts a finger to Anduin's lips, then leans down and replaces it with his mouth. He's an excellent, practiced kisser, a fact Anduin hadn't cared to bother discovering the night previous. He teases Anduin's lips with his tongue, his neat beard tickles, and he tastes of mint and vanilla and thistle smoke. Lor'themar kisses him until Anduin feels dizzy and then pulls him closer, crushing their bodies together. His far greater experience shows as his hands travel over Anduin's back and hips, stroking him in all the right ways.

"I would take you right over my desk," Lor'themar growls in his ear, and a thrill goes through Anduin's stomach as his heart speeds up.

Lor'themar regretfully pulls away then, though. "But Rommath will be back soon," he says, his voice husky. "I should be able to come to you tonight, at any rate."

Anduin steadies himself with one of the chairs before Lor'themar's desk, willing his blush to fade, his pulse to slow, and his erection to go down. "Of course. But--one more thing?" Anduin isn't sure how to ask, but Lor'themar's looking at him attentively. "You took such--care of me last night. May I return the favor now?" Lifting his hand, he infuses his palm and fingertips with Light, bringing them to a soft glow. Holding Lor'themar's single eye, he glances down. He doesn't think he needs to say more; Lor'themar's plainly not walking well.

Slowly Lor'themar nods, and Anduin brings his hand to rest lightly on Lor'themar's rear, sliding his hand down and rubbing in a single small circle. He doesn't need Lor'themar to spread his cheeks or even remove the layers of white silk and soft beige leather that prevent skin from meeting skin. Technically speaking physical contact isn't required at all, but touching maximizes healing potential, so Anduin touches. Anduin directs the Light deep into Lor'themar's pelvis, and the Light heals where it goes. After a few moments he pulls his hand away. Lor'themar only bows his head as he pulls back the glowing curtain to the edge of the doorway, but when he walks back around his desk to tidy the stack of parchments that fell and were gathered, he moves more comfortably.


	5. Chapter 5

"Want a hood?" Lor'themar offers before they leave his office, and from a trunk in his sitting room he produces a thin white length of cloth, almost like a scarf but with a wide cowl sewn into the middle. "It's a long journey, riding and then over the water, and your scalp and face will probably burn if you don't cover up some."

"I should be okay, I've gone out on the water before without a hat," Anduin says, but unbidden he thinks of Aerin and the positively vermilion sunburn he got in Ironforge when he napped outside, and the memory changes his mind.

"Not under the Quel'Thalassian sun, you haven't. Trust me," Lor'themar tells him, and there's nothing special about the way Lor'themar says it, nothing obvious in his face, but Anduin feels a little quiver down his spine when their eyes meet. He does trust Lor'themar.

"We could give you a hat," Halduron says, seemingly oblivious to the frission of shared cognizance between them, "but then you'd get hat hair."

"Okay," Anduin agrees, and he accepts the cowl from Lor'themar and arranges the fabric so it covers his head and overhangs his forehead, and he loops the ends of the scarf over his neck and shoulders to keep it in place. "Thanks." Neither Lor'themar nor Halduron moves to don any similar garment but only stand watching him put it on. "Are you going to wear these?"

"No, we'll just tan a little, if anything," Halduron says.

"Ever seen crown hair?" Anduin asks, directing the question to Halduron.

Halduron grins, and Anduin says before he can answer, "You haven't, because no one who wears one ever removes it in public. Because the result makes hat hair look stylish."

"I demand you show me before you leave," Halduron says as they begin down the hallway to the orbs.

They ride on hawkstriders headed west through the city. Anduin's pleased to be given Peris to ride again, and he pats her head.

They're accompanied by four of Anduin's guards, including Captain Miller. Four elven guards join them also, though the Silvermoon guards have switched from suits of plate to neat, uniform leathers. Two magisters in the formal crimson and royal purple robes of their office accompany them also. The magister is introduced to him as Magister Sylastor. Magistrix Fyalenn he remembers from dinner. 

After reaching a wide gate and turning northwest, they ride forth two abreast, down a long promenade raised up from an enormous expanse of formal gardens. To either side of the arched-up roadway he sees two sets of ruins, fallen chunks of broken white marble with grass springing up around them. Stones line the areas under them, crumbled and crushed but otherwise identical to the golden-beige paving stones that line Silvermoon's streets. A towering golden statue still stands on one side. Each circle of ruins is no more than twenty feet across. The look, two small places with ruins equidistant on either side of the perfectly paved road, standing amid beautiful gardens with all manner of flowers, give the impression of an unlabeled monument. A monument to-- ruins?

They'd ridden through a gate to the courtyard that led here, and they're surrounded by far-distant walls just like Silvermoon's city walls, white-beige stone with red and gold accoutrements and climbing ivy. Nevertheless, the realization of what he's looking at comes upon Anduin suddenly and after a delay.

"This was the western half of Silvermoon," he says in wonderment, looking around. "That was destroyed by the Scourge, in Arthas' march? You haven't fully rebuilt your city?"

Halduron sucks in an audible breath through his teeth as though Anduin's said something egregious, but when Anduin glances back at him, he's smiling.

"See that?" Rommath says in scathing tones to Lor'themar, and when Anduin looks at him he's half expecting a return to Rommath's previous contempt for him, but though the grand magister's expression is sharp, when their eyes meet he inclines his head slightly, and for once he does not look displeased.

Anduin's confused, but he can gather he's inadvertently taken Rommath's side in an argument.

Lor'themar ignores both his subordinates, saying only to Anduin, quietly, "Yes. You speculate correctly. Most of the rubble of the city here has been cleared away, and the gardens thrive, but what debris remains is left untouched by my orders." Lor'themar sounds pained. "We certainly don't lack the means to rebuild, but as I'm sure you've observed, the half of Silvermoon that stands and is occupied has far more space than we need. The loss of life Arthas wrought was extensive, we lost more to Kael's betrayal, and even now, with our numbers steadily growing, we are thinly spread. So yes, we could rebuild fully, only to leave the streets and towers on this side of the city empty, abandoned and gathering dust, half a ghost city. Or we could rebuild and then spread the populace even thinner, have our streets even emptier." Lor'themar speaks slowly, thoughtful. "But many like Rommath would see it rebuilt out of pride. Or minimally have the rubble fully cleared away. I wish to leave what you see here in memory of our fallen."

"I don't have a position," Halduron volunteers.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to re-ignite a debate," Anduin says apologetically. He glances at Rommath. Rommath's gaze sweeps the plaza, and he ignores Anduin, but he wears a satisfied expression, that of a man vindicated.

"It's fine," Lor'themar says, his face contemplative. "Thoughts from visitors unfamiliar with the situation give rare food for thought. We may yet rebuild. It is my hope and intention that we shall someday need the space again." He sighs.

"Never stop diving into the controversy, Anduin," Halduron says, somehow getting his hawkstrider to lean forward and nose Anduin in the back with its beak, making him jump.

Anduin wonders if asking about the low population size is rude. But he's in neck-deep on the subject already, and as a monarch-to-be someday in a world of perpetual war, the topic interests him. "Do you have policies in place to try to boost the birth rate?"

"Naturally," Lor'themar answers at the same time Rommath says, "We'd be mad not to." Rommath and Lor'themar look at each other, something silently passing between them, but as usual, Anduin has no idea what's going on.

"Financial incentives," Lor'themar says, and Anduin might have inquired further, but Lor'themar twists in the saddle to look behind him. "Halduron, did you remember to arrange for lunch on the boats?"

Halduron scoffs. "Would I forget something like that?" he asks, and then answers his own question. "No, Lor'themar, I would not."

They keep riding, and eventually turn right and head east off the wide promenade and then wind down a narrower road. They ride to a small natural harbor with a pier to match, manned by a dozen elves, all of whom bow deeply, and there they leave the hawkstriders behind. Ships and boats of various sizes are docked, most of them grand sailing vessels with fanned, lowered sails, or more modest sailboats, but Lor'themar leads them all the way to the end of the high pier. The dock attendants are placing baskets into three of the smallest vessels, golden elven gondolas not much larger than Stormwindian rowboats. The vessels are ornately painted and gilded and handsomely shaped, but bear neither oars nor sails nor anchors to hold them, and they're moored only by thin ropes half-coiled.

Lor'themar gracefully drops into one of the long, low boats, and Halduron jumps in hard after him with both feet, making the gondola swell and bob on the gentle waves when he lands. Lor'themar keeps his feet, widening his stance and balancing for one harrowing second with his arms before he fully regains his stability. He scowls at Halduron as he reaches out to Anduin, offering a hand in aid. Anduin accepts the help, gripping Lor'themar's gloved hand as he hops down into the small vessel. Lor'themar nods towards the middle of the gondola, indicating with his eyes, so Anduin sits down next to Halduron.

Anduin's unsure about the lack of oars and sails until he realizes they have one magister per gondola. The sin'dorei use magic for everything, it would seem, even sea travel. Magistrix Fyalenn splits the four Silvermoon guardsmen and Anduin's guards evenly into two groups and filters them onto the two additional boats. Magistrix Fyalenn steps into one vessel, Magister Sylastor the other. Anduin's guards make a lot of noise as they clamber one by one into the boats, their plate clanking. 

"Your Highness," Miller calls out roughly from the dock, "one of us at least should stay with you."

Multiple heads swivel in his direction to see and hear his reply. "I'll be fine, I'm well protected," Anduin calls back, gesturing between Halduron and Lor'themar. The tight line of Captain Miller's mouth suggests she isn't happy with this response, but she bows her head and shoulders to him and turns to get into the second boat. Anduin had asked his guards the night previous to do all he bid today, and to allow the elves to direct them too. He's glad they're obeying; he wants today to go without a hitch.

Rommath is still above them on the pier. Lor'themar helps Rommath into the boat, not only offering his hand but also slipping his arm around Rommath's waist as the grand magister descends with a cantrip into the vessel, guiding him down and keeping him steady on his feet. The practiced quality of their movements seems rehearsed, smooth as a dance, as though they've made this journey this exact way a hundred times. But Rommath moves stiffly after Lor'themar releases him, Anduin sees, after their morning's hours-long ride, and again he wonders at Rommath's age. For someone presenting so youthfully, he seems to have reached that delicate point between middle age and the cusp of old age. Not frail, yet, but perhaps slowly on his way there.

Shoulders straight, Rommath goes to the raised seat in the bow with a focused expression upon his face. Rommath stands, which seems unsafe, and he speaks a few quiet words in a language Anduin doesn't understand. One of the dock attendants unwinds the rope from the pier and tosses it with a shout to Lor'themar, who catches it and coils it as quickly and skillfully as the ranger he must once have been.

"Feel this," Lor'themar says to Anduin as he sits down in the prow, holding out the end of the rope. Anduin notices Lor'themar has rolled up the white sleeves of his shirt and removed his gloves, exposing his mildly tanned forearms almost to the elbow. It's an attractive sight.

Anduin obligingly rubs the rope between his thumb and forefinger. "It's very soft," he offers. "It feels like silk." The cord is not only soft but also thin, and he wonders at its use in mooring boats, even a small boat like theirs.

Lor'themar smiles at him as if he knows what Anduin is thinking. "You can spin it into thread and the cloth you'd weave feels exquisite on the skin. But we use it for rope because the fibers are incredibly strong. You could rappel down hundreds of feet of cliff face and the breaking strain wouldn't even be tested."

"Hm," Anduin says, as though he's impressed. He supposes he is, in fact.

In another thirty seconds they're underway, and Rommath sits down. The sun is well overhead, into early mid-day, and they eat a tidy lunch in the boat, of freshly baked, still-warm rolls with savory, rare meat baked inside. The basket also holds a salad of fruit, berries and sliced apples and chunks of snapvine watermelon. Anduin's fingers get sticky from the ripe fruits, and he leans over and dips his hands in the sea to rinse the juices from them. They share flasks of water and of soft red wine. By far it's the most casual meal he's eaten in the elves' country, more relaxed and picnic-like than he'd have thought them capable of based on their elaborate nightly feasts.

They cross a longer distance over the sea than Anduin had anticipated; he'd looked at maps before he came but for some reason he'd thought the Isle of Quel'Danas closer to Sunstrider Isle. He wonders at the risk here, at the seaworthiness of these light, low vessels amidst an ocean, wonders what they would do should a storm unexpectedly blow in.

"Sun's Reach Harbor," Halduron tells him as Rommath steers the boat towards a sloping docking ramp along the pier. Halduron stands in the boat and shouts a greeting to the blood elves milling around, then tosses them the rope, and several elves break away to haul the boat up.

Halduron and Lor'themar jump lithely from the boat; Rommath accepts Lor'themar's help and steps out with care. Anduin manages on his own, making a nimble leap. His bones ache when he lands, but the feeling only lasts for a second. Still, he's glad his face is turned away when the pain momentarily sweeps him.

The Isle of Quel'Danas contains almost a whole second city, Anduin thinks, looking around at the buildings and the expanses of keep walls as far as the eye can see. Almost two cities, he thinks, looking from the massive structure before them to another high on what appears to be a natural hill. He sees more than a few high elves wandering around and far more blood elves, though like Silvermoon the Isle seems sparsely populated relative to its great size.

The leather-clad dock workers bring them fresh hawkstriders, and they mount up and ride towards one of the walls that looks like a whole city wall, a perfect pale and gold palisade fortified with ornate ramparts and standing as far as the eye can see. Anduin leaves the cowl-scarf tied around his neck but pushes the hood back to better enjoy the intense sunshine and the view for a few minutes while they ride.

"Can you sense the Sunwell, Anduin?" Halduron asks. "Can you feel where it's coming from, I mean? What direction?"

The Sunwell may yet be distant, but the sacred font is huge and radiates the Holy Light, and Anduin can perceive it easily. Anyone could tell which way it lies without being able to sense anything at all, for there's a thin column of Light emerging from somewhere deep inside the fortress to their right, spiraling up into the sky. He points at the rightmost of the two sprawling castles, raising an eyebrow quizzically, for the obviousness makes him doubt himself for a moment.

"Hold up," Halduron says, dismounting, and he goes to Anduin's side. "I want to check something. Hop down, Anduin."

Anduin obligingly slides down and off his hawkstrider.

"I've heard Lightwielders, the really powerful ones, can sense sources of the Light and use it to find each other across distances," Halduron explains, and he pulls a strip of black cloth from a pouch on his belt. "Do you mind if we test this theory? Are you confident you can tell?"

Anduin laughs. "If you won't take my word for it," he says, and he glances at Lor'themar and Rommath before Halduron starts winding the soft cloth around his eyes. Rommath is staring and frowning. Lor'themar looks like he might drop off his hawkstrider and strangle Halduron at any moment. 

Halduron gently knots the ends of the cloth behind his head. "I don't want to know why you're carrying around a blindfold. I hope it was only for this," Anduin says.

"Oh, you know very well you're not the first person to wear this," Halduron says, near to his ear.

"Please tell me you at least washed it," Anduin jokes.

"Halduron--" Lor'themar's voice begins.

"He says he can do it," Halduron interrupts. "Don't you trust him? I wanted to try this with Liadrin but she wouldn't let me blindfold her. Can you imagine? Where is the trust?"

"Where, indeed." Rommath's voice, dolorous.

Halduron spins Anduin around several times, then stops and spins him the other way until he's disoriented-- or would be if not for the pulsing sense of holy energy behind him and slightly to his right. Under the black blindfold the world is darkness, but he turns enough to point, then stretch out his fingers. "It feels like the sun beating on my face, but different, because it's internal. Sort of instinctive."

"Very impressive," Halduron says, and Anduin pulls the blindfold off his face, blinking in the renewed sunshine.

"If you're quite done then, Halduron," Rommath says impatiently.

"They say you brought your father back from the dead when you were fourteen years old," Lor'themar says quietly. He's dismounted his own hawkstrider and dropped the reins, standing and watching them.

Anduin feels awkward to be asked about this. He might brush the question off were it not Lor'themar asking. "Yes and no. They say he was dead, but I thought he was only mortally wounded and dying. But I was... well. It was the Light that brought him back. I was the conduit, only."

"What was that like?" Halduron asks, offering his hand to help Anduin back onto his hawkstrider.

Anduin thinks about that for a second as he swings his leg over the creature's back and sits up. "Like a nightmare," he says finally. "It was the most desperate I've ever felt, and then probably the most relieved," he adds. "I love my father."

Halduron pats his leg as though Anduin hasn't really answered his question, but he's forgiven for it.

* * *

Appearances were true--the Sunwell lies within a veritable castle. Anduin can feel the Light energy growing as they come nearer their destination, like sunbeams radiating on and through him. The feeling warms his limbs, relaxing him.

The ride inwards is surprisingly long. A series of ramps slope upwards so gradually that mounted on a hawkstrider, Anduin almost doesn't notice the minute incline of the neverending terraces they ascend. Huge arcane protectors patrol the gardens, and elven guards stand at attention on the verandas as they pass. When they come at last to an area with an actual roof overhead, they leave the second set of hawkstriders with liveried attendants and continue on foot. Deep within the halls built around the Sunwell, they come finally to an overlook, a balcony looking out into the pillar of Light that is the Sunwell, and down onto the pedestal pool below.

The Light below them is brilliant, a wide and blindingly brilliant column rising from the water, far eclipsing the pale imitation in the Hall of Mirrored Lights but without the feeling of visual distortion and discomfort. Sensing the Sunwell from afar, even approaching it felt vastly different from beholding the well at this nearness, and the holiness of the setting is palpable. Anduin can feel the Light all around him, lighter than air and washing within him, saturating him even as it bathes the room below them. Anduin stares down, temporarily losing himself before Lor'themar touches his arm, gesturing to usher him down the last ramp leading to the holy well. Anduin resumes walking at his side, feeling the Light. As they walk Anduin looks down at the rich purple carpet beneath their feet, pristine in its swirling designs despite all the boots that have tread upon it, without really seeing it.

"Can you perceive the arcane?" Lor'themar asks him, his voice respectfully muted.

Anduin tries to open his senses and his core, open his mind to what's around him, but he only feels the Light's sweet warmth, and he shakes his head. "It's not what I'm attuned to, I guess," he answers. "But the Light..."

Lor'themar and Halduron both look at him. "But the Light?" Halduron prompts.

"The Light is so strong, I don't feel like I'm missing anything," Anduin says.

Anduin hangs back half a step, allowing Lor'themar to lead him down, Rommath and Halduron behind them. An error in etiquette here would be grievous, and he hasn't been instructed on any specifics of what he's supposed to do or not supposed to do. Reaching into the Sunwell appears to be forbidden, he sees, for no one disturbs the gleaming waters, but elves go right up to the edge of the pool and kneel. Some of them have tears on their faces. Some of them seem to be praying, with their eyes closed and sometimes their lips moving. Some only sit and look contented.

Lor'themar walks to the lip of the pool and sits down with his legs criss-crossed, so Anduin does the same. They have plenty of room, for the Sunwell is enormous, so much so that many elves or humans could stand shoulder-to-shoulder around the edge.

Glancing back, Anduin realizes Halduron hasn't approached with them and is leaning back along the wall instead. Rommath comes on Lor'themar's other side and kneels down carefully. From his own place on the floor Lor'themar reaches up, but Rommath settles down without taking his hand.

Anduin's beginning to turn away when he catches a glimpse of Rommath's face, and what he sees draws his full attention. Rommath appears at peace for the first time since Anduin's met him. The mordant, sour expression he assumes at rest has abated, and much of the bitterness has drained from his face. The Light from the Sunwell reflects in his eyes, turning their fel green glow golden and shining and making Anduin's breath catch for a second, but Rommath's eyes are still green, it's only a trick of that particular angle. Still, he looks like a different person, the way Lor'themar did when he slid down into the grass in the garden ten minutes' walk from Sunfury Spire.

Gazing at Rommath, Anduin feels suddenly like he's seeing something he shouldn't be, intruding on a personal moment. He turns back to the water and the Light and closes his eyes, retreating into his own private, holy paradise.

* * *

Anduin doesn't know how long they sit beside the Sunwell, bathing in Light. Hours, certainly. He feels the touch of the Light often, its warm tingle is nothing new, but usually he has to focus while he channels it himself. He's never simply sat at ease in a vast room of abundant, concentrated Light. He sits with his legs crossed and drowses, half-conscious, feeling his own slow heartbeat, the sweet comfort of bodily immersion in the Light. He rouses, and thinks, all his thoughts slow and tranquil, and then he consciously prays, and he opens his eyes and takes in the sight of the Sunwell, and then he drowses and wakes again in unknowable cycles, transcendent. Dimly he's aware of Lor'themar's warmth at his elbow.

His mind drifts, and without intending to, he thinks of Wrathion. But he thinks of Wrathion painlessly, recalling only the good memories--unintentionally staying up all night because they had so much to talk about, Wrathion griping about Juhui and then asking for a second match, the few occasions they'd soaked in the hot springs together. The times Wrathion had touched him, at first to deliberately startle him and take his measure startled, testing him because Wrathion loved to stir the pot, and later, Anduin thinks, to tease him, knowing he could make Anduin's skin burn with want. Wrathion's extravagant flirting. Wrathion's perfect smile. Wrathion always coming to find him. Anduin's pretty sure, with the gifts of inner peace and distance, that Wrathion loved him too.

He thinks of his mother, whom he does not remember. But he has her picture on his bedchamber wall at home, and he's stared at it so much, he thinks maybe he's invented some memories. He feels her within himself. He's been told he has her face, and through his shirt he fingers her locket. He can't feel the relief of its extruding lines and engravings through the fabric, but he knows every curve and seam in the embossed metal by heart, just as he knows she loved him more than life.

He thinks of Bolvar, his second father, who taught him and looked after him, who watched out for him during the dark years of Onyxia wielding power so cunningly from behind the throne. Bolvar kept him safe while his father was gone, and even after his father's return, Bolvar was always accepting, understanding, loving, and proud of him before his father became as he is now.

And most of all, Anduin thinks of his father. 

His father has changed so much, calmed, become wiser, slower to anger, more cautious. One thing that's never changed is his steadfastness, his unstoppable determination in trying to protect Anduin. His father's constantly imparting knowledge and dispensing the wisdom of experience, sometimes only by example, trying to teach him how to rule and be safe and be strong, all of it signifying the unending well of his father's love and caring for him, and the warmth and fullness of his feelings threatens to overspill Anduin's heart. He bows his head and weeps soundlessly with his eyes closed, smiling, without shame.

In his tears, overwhelmed, he longs for his father almost like he's a child again, with a need so great it's almost physical. He remembers certain of their reunions over the years. He recalls when he almost leapt into his father's arms after Onyxia's lair. He feels, as phantom sensation, the tightness of his father's embrace when they found each other again in Pandaria after all his adventures. He remembers a conversation by his mother's grave on Remembrance Day, tense at first before the dam of pent-up emotions between them broke open.

He aches, but he feels pure, his heart pained yet as light as a bird taking to the air, gliding on the wind. As with his thoughts of Wrathion, the memories are more sweet than bitter. Perhaps more hours pass. His tears have long since dried and evaporated away, and he's been touched by each of a thousand fleeting degrees of love and peace and yearning before he sees Lor'themar stir in his peripheral vision. Lor'themar places a hand on his forearm, bringing him out of his trance. Anduin blinks his eyes and looks at his host.

"Are you ready to go?" Lor'themar says kindly. "We should eat, at least, the hour is late."

Anduin nods and gets up, not without a certain amount of struggle, for his legs have grown stiff with the passing hours. Lor'themar rises gracefully and without difficulty, limber even after hours sitting on the floor. But of course he would be, Anduin thinks, the elves use seat cushions as often as they sit on their couches. Anduin draws a fraction of Light into his rigid thighs and calves and immediately the stiffness fades. Rommath has already gone, though many elves remain in the room and around the pool. Halduron still occupies the same place by the wall, or if he left, he left and then came back, and he follows beside Anduin as they leave. Together they walk through the rooms of the Sunwell and join Rommath in a well-guarded, curtained alcove. The three of them seat themselves around the table where Rommath sits absently drinking. More food and wine are brought to them. For once they do not speak. Even Halduron with his normal silence-filling stream of playful chatter is quiet, though he's the first to rouse.

"So," Halduron asks at length, looking up. "Worth the trip?"

"Seeing your city alone was worth the trip," Anduin answers, and Lor'themar smiles. "But yes. Yes, it was." Anduin can see from the open windows that night has fallen. "Will we need to stay here overnight?" he asks.

"Oh, no, not unless you want to," Lor'themar says. "You can be back in your bedchamber in the Spire within ten minutes. Rommath will portal us back."

Anduin blinks. "You portal back and forth?" A stupid question. "Of course you do. Then why--"

"You wanted to make a pilgrimage, did you not?" Lor'themar asks, a slightly mischievous look on his face.

Anduin laughs aloud, and he admits, "I was sort of thinking the Isle might be too holy a place for portals."

Rommath apparently can't stifle a snorting, disbelieving laugh at this disclosure, and he pinches the bridge of his nose, not meeting any of their eyes. "I don't think there's anything at all between your ears, Prince Anduin," he says finally.

"Rommath!" Lor'themar looks shocked, and angry too. "Apologize at once."

"It's fine, I realized it was absurd as soon as I stopped and thought about it for half a second," Anduin says, placating.

"I apologize," Rommath says blandly.

"Remind me, when was the last time you resurrected someone from death, Rommath?" Halduron inquires. "I feel like it's been a while."

Rommath shrugs at Halduron. "I said nothing about his capabilities. I'm duly impressed by them. I only commented on his witlessness. See, he took no offense."

Lor'themar stares at Rommath, his lips parted, and when he speaks his voice is like steel. "Silence. Not another word."

"We're fine," Anduin says, wanting to defuse the sudden hard tension that's sprung up between Rommath and Lor'themar. "The grand magister does me the rare honor of brutal honesty, and in turn I know he doesn't mind when I say he's the most abrasive person I've ever met, including Garrosh Hellscream and Onyxia."

Rommath smiles as though this remark amuses him, but he obeys Lor'themar's snapped command and says nothing.

Lor'themar's eyes flash from Rommath's face to Anduin's as though he's realized something disgraceful has been transpiring right beneath his nose.

"You made Rommath laugh, so truly, you are powerful," Halduron says, turning to Anduin. "That said, Anduin, you know I love you, but you'd go to dinner with the Amani not knowing what they eat."

Anduin flashes an embarrassed smile; he can only shrug.

"Halduron, do not speak of that here," Lor'themar says, his face reproving.

"Apologies, it was tasteless," Halduron says slyly.

"I am so appalled at you both," Lor'themar rebukes them, scowling. With a roll of his eyes heavenward, as if for fortitude, he turns back to Anduin. "My best advisors, both incorrigible. I will apologize on their behalves. In truth, it was pleasing to make the journey again." Lor'themar sips his wine, and a sea breeze from the window stirs at their hair. "I like the water. But if you wish to return tomorrow and spend more time here, Rommath will open a portal. And he shall keep his abrasive mouth closed as he does so."


	6. Chapter 6

That night, twenty minutes after Lor'themar's walked him to his suite and bid him goodnight, the panel in Anduin's parlor swings open. The hinged mosaic-door stays open for a moment, closes, and Lor'themar shimmers to visibility in front of it.

"Anduin," Lor'themar says amiably, but then he puts a hand on the panel as if offering to leave. At some point in the evening he unrolled and smoothed his sleeves, and he's once again neat as a pin in his fashion. "Have you reconsidered?"

Anduin shakes his head no, and he stands. "Why would I reconsider?"

Lor'themar comes over to him, and they sit down on the settee together. Lor'themar answers his question with another question. "You're sure you're comfortable with this being... a pleasurable diversion, soon to be memory?" Lor'themar searches his face. "A fling?" A tiny smile steals over his face as he says this last word, Anduin's word, and he puts a hand to Anduin's neck, stroking lightly there.

"I'm sure," Anduin says. Is Lor'themar afraid Anduin will start mooning after him, thereby exposing him and ruining the surreptitious nature of their arrangement? "I'm in love with someone else," he says, a half-calculated revelation meant to reassure Lor'themar, but there--he's said it aloud for the first time. "Someone I can't have," he adds, willing Lor'themar to understand, not to pry. He thinks suddenly, even as he knows that he won't, that he might cry if Lor'themar probes. But he's wept all he's going to today.

Lor'themar looks surprised for a second, then nods. "You'd like me to help you forget her?" A crease appears in his forehead. "Him?" he questions.

Anduin nods as if he's certain, although the truth is, he's not sure what he feels. His feelings are suddenly jumbled. Is he in love with Wrathion still, or has it faded enough now that he's not? Is Wrathion lost to him, or is he lost to Wrathion?

He doesn't know. But either way, he doesn't identify a gender.

Lor'themar leans in even closer. "The amnesia I can induce is only temporary," Lor'themar says against his ear, "but I would be pleased to offer any assistance I can." Lor'themar's fingers drift to Anduin's shoulder and back to his neck, caressing him.

"He haunts me," Anduin blurts miserably, without thinking. Then he stops, dismayed at himself. He knows enough to know that a cardinal rule of romances, even romances without love, is not to speak of one's heart being elsewhere. Lor'themar's fingers still against the nape of his neck.

"Sorry, I don't know where that came from," he adds, abashed as Lor'themar pulls back enough to look him in the eye. Something about this place has made him impulsive in so many ways, and Anduin doesn't know if it's the shining magical lights of Silvermoon's nights, or the bloodthistle and herbs they smoke often enough to keep the intoxication in his system, or the ancient yet fresh and sweet air of Quel'Thalas that he breathes. But Lor'themar doesn't complain, only tilts his head and gives Anduin a keen look of deep empathy.

Nevertheless, he's embarrassed. To force the the moment past faster, Anduin leans forward and kisses him. Lor'themar puts a hand to the side of Anduin's face and kisses him back until his head swims. Lor'themar's kisses are a teasing enterprise, light touches of lips and tongue interspersed with short bursts of more intensity. Anduin tries to match him, to imitate him. When Lor'themar slides a hand over Anduin's chest, they break apart.

"Does Vol'jin know I'm here?" Anduin asks. While he doesn't necessarily want to talk right now, he wants the subject on both their minds to be something else. And he's curious, and if they're going to cross boundaries he may as well break the political talk taboo. The words come fast; he's almost out of breath, and he's hard just from the small touches and the thoroughness of Lor'themar's kisses, from the mint of his breath, strong as though he's chewed some mint leaves, to the scents of vanilla and bloodthistle and smoke and under it all, the smell of Lor'themar himself. Even the faint muskiness of his sweat is arousing. Anduin takes advantage of the moment to reach down and yank his sash over his head. Then he wonders if he's supposed to wait, if he's supposed to let Lor'themar undress him instead.

"Of course," Lor'themar says frankly, unscrewing his two pieces of strange emerald-studded sleeve-jewelry one by one and placing them carefully on the table. If Lor'themar thinks his choice of bedroom talk strange, he doesn't say so. "I wouldn't dare attempt to conceal such a thing, when my meetings with your father during Garrosh's reign became an open secret."

"I thought that would be the case," Anduin says, pleased to have guessed right, and he tugs Lor'themar's fine, half-unbuttoned shirt over his head, wanting it off. Lor'themar raises his arms, assisting him.

Anduin vaguely remembers the sight of Lor'themar without his shirt, but the mental images are hazy, and with his mind clear and eager he takes a better look. Lor'themar's upper arms are lean, yet muscular. His torso is well-muscled and surprisingly hairy, more so than stuck in Anduin's memory, with the faintest hint of a tan, the same as his arms and face. Anduin steals a glance at his face, wondering if he sunbathes naked, and he runs his blue-enameled fingernails lightly through the pale hair on Lor'themar's chest.

"I am quite averse to risk when it comes to the safety of my people," Lor'themar says, implying, Anduin supposes, he's not averse to a certain amount of risk to his person, and it suddenly occurs to Anduin that although Lor'themar is many years older than he is, the forbidden aspect of this liaison could be a turn-on to the lord regent just as it is to him.

Lor'themar doesn't seem particularly aroused, though, except for his cock being half-erect, lying along his thigh. He seems oddly unruffled by the foreplay, his passion nearly perfunctory. Maybe elves are just calm about sex after a couple hundred years of it. Anduin has no idea. Lor'themar's chest rises and falls evenly under his hand, and when he raises his eyes he sees Lor'themar is watching him.

Something in his upper peripheral vision catches his eye, something amiss, and when he glances further up, Anduin suddenly notices the bruising on Lor'themar's long pale ears. "Your ears," he says, horrified, and Lor'themar grimaces. "They weren't--what happened?" Not his cleverest question ever. "They weren't--like that before?"

Lor'themar reaches up and touches one gingerly. "I don't apply my own cosmetics, so I had only rudimentary, rather old powder on hand to cover the marks up. I reapplied it once, but it probably sweated off over the course of the afternoon."

"I wish you'd told me this morning in your office," Anduin says, chastened.

Lor'themar only shrugs. "What you did this morning was most helpful."

Lor'themar is a warrior and a stoic, like his father, Anduin thinks, not one to complain of any minor injuries or infirmities, maybe not even major ones. Whispering a prayer, Anduin fills both his hands with Light and gently takes Lor'themar's ears, stroking upwards. Lor'themar drops his chin for better access.

"The bruising is the more dangerous injury, but the base is where they still ache," Lor'themar says with his head bowed, without looking at him. 

"The base?" Anduin's bemused, and peers again, but the base of Lor'themar's ears are unblemished.

"From pulling," Lor'themar says neutrally.

Anduin winces. "Oh." Of course, the contusions only happened under his fingers, but the invisible, lasting pain would be at the pressure points. The bruises are more perilous because they're visible evidence, that part at least Anduin understood at once. He half-remembers how he inflicted these injuries, vaguely recalls crumpling Lor'themar's ears in his hands with muscles that weren't entirely obedient, and he remembers wrenching them back and forth to guide Lor'themar's head. Tenderly he moves his fingertips down, letting the Light suffuse Lor'themar's ears where they meet his soft platinum head. "I'm so sorry."

"It's fine. Thank you for attending to them," Lor'themar says, and for a moment they're silent with Lor'themar's head lowered and Anduin's fingers on his ears, infusing his injured flesh with the Light. The skin of Lor'themar's ears is velvety, not dissimilar to the softest skin of Anduin's cock, though Anduin can feel some of the age-old, faded white scars under his fingertips.

"Tell me, has Rommath been terrible to you?" Lor'themar asks.

Anduin's not as prepared to field this question as he suddenly wishes he was. "Uh... he had some choice words for me," Anduin says, "but I'm afraid I, ah, kind of started it. I was trying to be forthright and I... provoked him. He was hostile, but he also had a good point, and I think we made it to an understanding."

Lor'themar's mouth twists as though he's not entirely satisfied with this vague explanation, but he presses no further. Anduin strokes Lor'themar's long ears very gently, tracing the inner curve of them upwards before he lowers his hands. 

"Thank you," Lor'themar says, flexing his ears at the base in a way that reminds Anduin a little of the way a cat rotates its ears, though the elven range of motion seems far more limited. "That's much better."

Lor'themar leisurely unbuttons Anduin's shirt, and Anduin works much more swiftly on Lor'themar's belt, and by mutually unspoken necessity they stand. Lor'themar disrobes Anduin unhurriedly, as if they have all the time in the world; Anduin feels much less patient. Lor'themar finishes removing his pants himself, gracefully kicking them off where they cling to an ankle. Anduin runs his hands over Lor'themar's chest, intentionally trying to distract him, to work him up and make him as eager as Anduin feels himself. He takes Lor'themar's length in his hand and strokes a few times, experimentally, but Lor'themar only smiles at him. Anduin keeps going, adding thumb action under the head of Lor'themar's cock. Lor'themar's skin here is exquisitely soft, a pleasure under his fingers. He garners a small hitch in Lor'themar's breath, and Lor'themar gets harder in his hand, but that's all, and then he sits back down, removing his cock from Anduin's grip. Anduin's not sure what he's after, even. He sits back down next to Lor'themar. Elves are definitely calm when it comes to sex.

But as he looks at Lor'themar's face he becomes distracted himself. Lor'themar's regarding him warmly, and how had he ever thought Lor'themar's face remote? Lor'themar has a face like his father's, his history and character and personality written into every inch. Anduin reaches up with awed fingers and touches Lor'themar's cheek, and a thrill runs through his stomach, because he's been granted the privilege to touch what he's only looked upon covetously for days. Anduin runs one finger down along the scar on Lor'themar's face, feeling the stubble that's grown over the course of the day, and the bumpy, sharp texture is so foreign he presses his whole hand to the side of Lor'themar's face to experience more of the strangely stimulating feeling. His own cheeks are smooth still, he's never shaved any of his sparse body hair, and he hasn't touched a man's whiskers with his hands since he was a child, with his father and with Bolvar in a wholly innocent way. He gently pinches Lor'themar's immaculate goatee between his index finger and thumb, stroking that too. His beard appears soft, luxurious, but perhaps that's only good grooming, for the texture is coarse as sex hair. Anduin mentally catalogues these little details; he knows he'll want them later.

Lor'themar leaves his white and beige ombre eyepatch on, and Anduin doesn't dare touch it. They could have any kind of sex in the world and it would somehow be a less intimate prospect than reaching up to try and remove the eyepatch. He's not sure whether Lor'themar would stop him, but if Lor'themar wanted the eyepatch off, he'd take it off. Anduin's not even sure it would be good etiquette to inquire about it, though he's curious how Lor'themar came to lose an eye. Perhaps when he returns home, the SI:7 files will tell.

He's conscious of his own physical damage, more selfconscious than he thought he would be. He's brushed the state of his body off during previous occasions with nakedness and near-nudity, but he feels less brazen and more self-aware with this change in context. Preparing for sex--maybe, eventually, sometime this month--his body is being offered up for someone else's judgement, and from the neck down he's got scars everywhere. Even the shaft of his cock has an inch of scar tissue, and few expanses of his skin are perfectly smooth to the touch anymore. But Lor'themar's hard as he looks Anduin over, and his touches are as respectful and gentle as his single eye.

Besides which, Lor'themar's covered in scars too, though going by the look of him, his resulted from a far more eclectic mix of injuries. Recognizably puckered burn scars wrap around his thigh and one arm and one shin. A thick, vertical, strangely even and centered white line runs from his navel nearly to the base of his cock, as though someone tried to disembowel him at close range. Anduin has some experience with battle injuries, and seeing thousands of scars in his time in the healing chambers within the Cathedral of Light, plus conversation with their owners, has taught him a great deal about what manner of injuries result in what sorts of scars. With one finger, feather-soft, Anduin assesses the raised ridge of skin, feeling the width of the line. The perfect evenness and alignment despite its width and long length tells him this wound was probably not from a wild blow made in the frenzy of battle. Lor'themar was prone or immobilized, maybe even unconscious when he received the exacting, deep, butcher-clean slice that must have made it. "I'm guessing based on this, you should be dead," he says.

"And you, I don't have to guess, I know you should be," Lor'themar says archly.

Anduin laughs. "Look at us, we're a mess," he says, amused, because suddenly it seems funny. "I mean, you're beautiful, but between us we don't have an unmarked inch."

Lor'themar touches the long line beneath his navel where Anduin's fingers are exploring. "I acquired mine over decades, one or two or three at a time, so each time, what was one more?" Prying Anduin's fingers away, he interlaces them with his own and rubs Anduin's palm with his thumb. "It must have been hard to cope with getting all yours at once, and so young."

"The pain was pretty bad," Anduin admits. "But I know I'm lucky to be alive."

"I know that feeling well," Lor'themar says, but he looks unhappy. He kisses Anduin again, all too briefly, then pulls away.

They keep starting to touch each other, then halting, and Anduin's nearly beginning to fidget. "Should we go to the bed?"

"Certainly." Lor'themar stands and holds out his hand, as unselfconscious naked as Rommath is, and Anduin takes his hand and allows Lor'themar to lead him.

"What would you have of me?" Lor'themar asks when they're lying together in the rumpled silken sheets of the bed, face to face on their sides, and finally Anduin feels like they're getting down to business. Lor'themar trails a calloused finger delicately up the line of Anduin's thighs in back, parting Anduin's cheeks and brushing his fingertip through the crevice there. Anduin shivers, and his muscles below reflexively clench at the touch. "Would you take your pleasure in my body, again?" The words all come whispered. Lor'themar grips him by the hips. "Or allow me to seek mine in yours?"

Anduin hesitates, because he's fairly certain from the way it's asked that Lor'themar most wants this second choice. He wants that, maybe, at least wants to try it, but he wants far more to sink all the way inside Lor'themar's heat again and fuck him and feel that absolute ecstasy from coming with his cock sheathed in someone else's body. That orgiastic feeling he remembers even through the haze of the drugs last night. The thing he most often fantasizes about when he spurts.

But he badly hurt Lor'themar last night--it's difficult to believe that was only last night--and it seems a good time to be generous. "You can," Anduin answers finally, speaking softly also. His cheeks feel warm and pink, and Lor'themar smiles charmingly as he clasps Anduin close and kisses him.

Lor'themar runs hands over him, one hand at last finding his length. Anduin feels a pang of loss inside, because he'd hoped it would be Wrathion holding him, kissing him, wanting him this way. He'd wanted to look up and see sharp red eyes when someone else's hand finally closed in welcome sensation around his cock.

But Wrathion hadn't wanted him, or hadn't wanted him enough, and the single eye fixed on his face is a soft, glowing, solicitous green, and Lor'themar's touch is wonderful. Anduin thrusts into his hand, breathing out in a rush, his hips shifting and pushing and pulling in the circle of Lor'themar's fingers and palm. Their faces are only inches apart, and Anduin dimly tries to discern what color Lor'themar's eye would be without the green luminescence, but he can't tell.

Lor'themar's body feels strong against his, corded with muscle and coiled with a warrior's unspent strength. Wrathion was a good foot shorter than Lor'themar, but Anduin's certain his slim, dark body would have had a similar undercurrent of power running under his skin, maybe far more so because Wrathion had not only great strength but quite literal power, Titan power, draconic power thrumming through his flesh and bone. And Anduin's sure Wrathion would have stamina like Kalecgos. Wrathion would probably wear him out.

And now--now he's thinking of Wrathion again.

With an effort he banishes all thoughts of slippery, faithless dragons from his mind and mentally forges ahead, thrusting a little harder and faster into Lor'themar's hand. Lor'themar nudges a leg between his, still stroking him. Lor'themar's fully hard and ready to go.

Again they kiss, and when they break apart Anduin touches Lor'themar's cock again, lightly this time. "Is this because I'm young, or because I'm technically speaking the enemy, or you just like the make-up?" Anduin asks it dispassionately, smiling slightly, trying to put forth the question in a way that implies he won't be judgmental about the answer.

Lor'themar laughs, and the sound is like when Anduin lifted the mallet and struck the Divine Bell with all his might, and the world turned to music. 

"I will confess to the second, though I would rather be your ally than your enemy," Lor'themar murmurs, and Lor'themar may be saying it simply because he knows Anduin will enjoy hearing it, but either way the words are a melody to Anduin's ears. Lor'themar teases with his fingers at the back of Anduin's neck while he pumps Anduin to the point of leaking need with the other hand. His fingers and palms are rough and calloused, but his touch is gentle, and he obviously knows exactly what he's doing; the combination of sensations works like magic. Anduin feels his hips surge forward into Lor'themar's hand. "Also, I do not know how often you are told this, but you are quite beautiful. The very picture of young, human, male beauty. In bloom, if you will. Though I would like you just as well if you were older."

"I could listen to you talk forever," Anduin divulges on a breath with minimal thought beforehand, and Lor'themar smiles. Wrathion had a marvelous voice, too, a voice that could melt butter and sin.

Lor'themar's cock presses insistently against Anduin's hip, and Anduin swallows at the physical evidence of Lor'themar's desire for him, wondering if he's really ready for this after all. He's torn between desire and nerves. The thought of Lor'themar pushing that cock inside him to use his body makes his stomach turn, and not entirely in a good way. He's choosing this now, and he's anxious and afraid of what that means, of what he's already given up.

But there's no point waiting now. None at all. And so he leans forward and kisses Lor'themar again.

* * *

When he wakes, it's to Lor'themar easing away from him in bed. The earliest nebulous aura of daylight faintly lights the room from the windows, and Lor'themar smiles at him apologetically. "It's nearly dawn. I must go."

Lor'themar rises, collects his clothes from the parlor and comes back into the bedchamber, and Anduin watches him dress much more hurriedly than he undressed. When he's clad, Lor'themar rummages in a pocket and produces a clear vial with a thin lavender fluid inside. Anduin recognizes the contents at once--the substance is an invisibility potion.

Before Lor'themar uncaps the vial, he sits on the edge of the bed where Anduin is still lying naked under the sheet.

"I will see you soon," Lor'themar says, sliding a warm hand over Anduin's bare chest, down to his abdomen, then lower, just grazing his sex. Lor'themar has brilliant hands, with fingers that leave desire in their wake. "The night's leisure has truly been a great pleasure."

"For me too," Anduin tells him, meaning it. He's had his mind blown. His faint embarrassment at the memories from the night is overcome by his bodily sense of contentment that lingers even now, hours later. He can sense, though, that Lor'themar's calloused, experienced hands could easily overcome that lasting, slow-burn sense of satisfaction, and his sleepiness too. Perhaps Lor'themar becomes aware of this possibility, for he pulls his hand back up to Anduin's chest and leaves it there.

"The hearthstone to here, that Halduron gave you. I put it in the right-hand pocket of your tunic. In the left-hand pocket is another hearthstone, my own hearthstone. It will bring you to my office. If you wish my company tonight, use it a short time after you're alone. But make sure you have yours with you to get back."

Lor'themar taps Anduin's chest with one finger and squints his single eye as if trying to determine whether Anduin is sufficiently awake to be receptive to important instructions, and so Anduin re-positions his head and widens his eyes. "Do you have that?" Lor'themar asks.

"Yes," he says. "Yours is on the left. But bring both. I understand."

"The better part of valor," Lor'themar says. "Remember, please."

Anduin nods earnestly, if sleepily, and Lor'themar unstoppers the vial as he goes to the courtesans' panel in the bedchamber wall. With his single green-glowing eye on Anduin, he drinks the contents in a swift motion and vanishes. The panel swings open, then closes just as silently.

Anduin closes his eyes and immediately falls back to sleep.

* * *

Rommath seems worn out in the bathhouse that morning, his bearing no longer perfectly upright, and Anduin wonders if the change is due to their hours-long journey the day previous. But he's almost pleasant, for Rommath. "Your talent for stating the obvious was appreciated yesterday," Rommath says with what might conceivably be sincerity.

As they sit in the sauna they have a conversation about their respective duties, and he ends up telling Rommath of going searching for the farmers' missing cows and stumbling upon the cultists' altar to the Old Gods.

"You disrupted their religious rituals," Rommath points out. "Of course they tried to kill you. I'm sure you would likewise want to defend your right to practice your religion if your worship was violently suppressed and your holy things defiled."

Anduin knows Rommath well enough to be confident, at this point, that he doesn't actually support Old God cult practices and is only being difficult. "Even if you want to argue that was a legitimate initiation ritual and they had a right to their religion of choice, they were performing their spiritual observances with the body parts of stolen livestock," Anduin objects, and Rommath smiles.

"You remind me somewhat of my son," Rommath tells him idly.

Anduin feels his eyebrows lift. "I... didn't know you had a son."

"I had four," Rommath answers, and even if not for the past tense, Anduin would be able to tell they no longer all number amongst the living. "And three daughters, and many grandchildren."

Rommath is silent for a moment before he goes on. "One of my youngest was--complaisant, and kind. He could be fatuous like you, but he had the courage of his convictions, for all the good that did him, and he could admit mistakes. He saw the best in everyone, because he thought everyone was like him."

Anduin doesn't know how well he fits this description; he knows only too well not everyone in the world has the best intentions. But except for being called fatuous the comparison is not unflattering, and he's more than a bit surprised to hear it, so he refrains from nitpicking. Rommath doesn't say any more.

"Thank you, I think," Anduin says when the silence stretches out.

"Humility is an unusual quality in a ruler," Rommath says, stroking the teak of the bench. "You might make a passable king, assuming no disasters happen. Don't let sycophants ruin you."

"I'll try to keep someone around with a sharp tongue, who can put me in my place," Anduin says a little teasingly. Rommath flashes a thin-lipped smile, but his eyes are not so hard as they were.

* * * 

When he gets back to his rooms, clean and dressed, Anduin goes into the tiny study and sits at the desk. The top drawer has sealing wax candles in a palette of colors: black and white, red and gold, turquoise, a light shade of brown, purple and royal blue. Sparing a moment to wonder whether the blue has been provided for him or was meant for the ambassador from the Undercity, Anduin lights the little blue candle in the brazier before he begins to write. He considers his words as he takes a piece of the parchment and uncaps the inkwell. Finally picking up the quill and wetting it in the ink, he blots it and pens a brief note.

_Dear Father,_

_I will be returning home tomorrow morning. Please don't worry, nothing is amiss. I am in no danger and having a great time. See you tomorrow, right after breakfast._

_Your son,  
Anduin_

He purposely keeps his wording positive, avoiding phrases like _cutting my visit short_ , and eschewing giving a reason. He looks at the message after he's done. He'd waited, quite deliberately, til the last minute to let his father know of his early return to Stormwind. If his father were allowed more than a day to think about what an early homecoming might mean, he'd start worrying. This way he'll be reassured by the nearness of Anduin's impending return... or so Anduin can hope.

Blowing lightly on the note to dry the ink faster, Anduin folds it neatly, takes the candle, and drips the melted liquid over the parchment, then presses his seal into the wax puddle. He lets the seal harden and gives the note to Wyll to get to his father.

In the end, Anduin decides he wants to spend the day, both morning and afternoon, at the Sunwell. If he does anything else, he thinks, a hike with Halduron or any of a dozen cultural activities, he'll spend the whole time regretting not seeing the Sunwell one last time, and the day will pass as slowly as the dripping honey they serve him every morning with breakfast. If he and Lor'themar could spend the day in bed, he might reconsider, but that's not an option, so the choice is easy.

But he ends up spending only a portion of the day praying beside Rommath in the Sunwell, bathing in the purity of the Light. They depart the Isle in mid-afternoon, dress for dinner and attend a final great banquet in the evening, and afterwards he goes to smoke with Lor'themar one last time under the stars.

Lor'themar stretches out in the grass as usual, heedless of the cream-colored silk in his slashed sleeves. They smoke and talk the same amount of time as before, though Anduin rather wishes they could cut it short so as to spend more time together in the privacy of Lor'themar's office. But he understands Lor'themar's wish to maintain the appearance of normalcy, so he suggests nothing to this effect, not even in code.

"What was the Prophet Velen like as a mentor?" Lor'themar asks.

Anduin thinks about that. "I couldn't have asked for a better teacher. I met him at a... at a difficult time, and I realized in the space of a few hours that I wanted to leave home so he could teach me. My father wanted me to study under the Archbishop in Stormwind if that was what I wanted to do, but I felt sure Velen knew what I needed to learn. And... he did." When Lor'themar's not looking at him, Anduin purses his lips and tries to puff out smoke rings the way Lor'themar does effortlessly, but he finds he can't immediately make it happen. 

"Perhaps for the best," Lor'themar says, and he raises an eyebrow. "You know the things they say about your Archbishop?"

"Yeah, I've heard." The subject makes him a little uncomfortable. Stormwind draws its share of lurking monsters. "Was there anyone who mentored you?"

Lor'themar holds his pipe over his chest, considering. "I had many teachers, yet was largely self-taught. Sylvanas, if anyone. She was my superior officer and oversaw most of my promotions over the years."

"Oh," Anduin says awkwardly. Sylvanas, again. For a second time he changes the subject. "I wanted to ask you--Rommath said something along the lines of, if not for the incident with Garrosh and the Divine Bell, you wouldn't have had me here. What did he mean by that?"

Lor'themar glances at him. "I saw you at Garrosh's trial. I daresay most who heard you speak and watched that Vision were moved. You spoke with integrity, and acted with honor, and your lack of prejudice showed in your testimony."

"Oh."

"Is that not what you expected?" Lor'themar asks.

"No, if you want the truth." Anduin's not sure how candid he should be, but a split second later he decides to be frank. "I wondered if maybe it was out of guilt for helping Garrosh acquire the Bell."

"Hm. No. Respect, rather. Admiration, even." Lor'themar seems thoughtful. "You don't blame us, do you?"

"No, not at all," Anduin says honestly. "I am, though, deeply sorry for what happened in Dalaran, for the violence there, and for the fact that your arrangements with my father fell apart," Anduin offers.

Lor'themar presses his free hand to his heart, a gracious gesture. "It was a regrettable series of events," he agrees, and Anduin supposes it would be bad form now for him to imply he would've liked for his people to rejoin the Alliance. Anduin knows he's solemnly re-pledged his people's allegiance to Vol'jin's Horde. Lor'themar breathes out a sigh and sits up. "We'll be rising early tomorrow morning to see you off. Shall we retire for the evening?"

Anduin nods, masking all traces of his eagerness as they rise.

* * *

Anduin waits fifteen long minutes after he's ensconced in his room to use the hearthstone Lor'themar gave to him.

He materializes in the parlor of Lor'themar's office. The door is closed and the lights are dim, and Lor'themar is there, though he must have only just arrived, for he's still putting away his things in the carved mahogany cabinet behind his desk.

Lor'themar turns and sees him and smiles. He comes out from behind his desk, takes Anduin's hand and leads him through a doorway into a room with a wide divan that's nearly bed-like and a large mirror on the wall opposite. He allows Lor'themar to draw him forward.

"I nap here sometimes," Lor'themar says when he sees Anduin looking between the divan and the mirror. Anduin runs a hand over the dusky blue velvet, wondering if Lor'themar often has trysts on it too, but he isn't about to ask. He feels a sharp thread of possessiveness at this thought, but he knows Lor'themar's romantic life before and after him is none of his business.

"I want to fuck you tonight," Anduin tells him when their eyes meet.

Lor'themar raises his eyebrows as a tiny smile flashes over his face, and he deftly begins to unbutton his shirt. Anduin has no idea what that little smile means. Elven faces, despite their flexibility and expressiveness, can be immensely difficult to read when the emotion is not obvious--happiness, weariness, sadness he can all tell.

He's anxious suddenly, for Lor'themar is far older than him and must have had many lovers, and Anduin's chest fills with doubt. They've technically had sex on two occasions already, but the first time he was insensate and the second time Lor'themar smoothly took charge, so this is the first opportunity Anduin's had to falter and hesitate. He's not sure he can ever measure up to Lor'themar's probable breadth of experience, or compare to the probably equally experienced lovers Lor'themar's had. Mentally he reassures himself: it's not a competition, Lor'themar knows he's inexperienced, Lor'themar wouldn't be here if he didn't want to be.

Anduin doesn't waste time with talking as they did the night previous. He strips Lor'themar, who returns the favor with a smile, and he backs Lor'themar up against the divan. The only part he takes his time with is introducing a slick finger into Lor'themar. The night before, Lor'themar had taken his time stretching Anduin out prior to penetration, his touch gentle and unhurried. When Anduin exercises a similar level of care, though, at the same slow speed, Lor'themar tells him, "You can go faster, I won't break."

Anduin adds a second finger then, going harder, and after another half-minute Lor'themar sits up and climbs on him. Getting an inch inside him feels so good Anduin almost loses control when the head of his cock pops in, so strongly does the urge to thrust up race through him, but Lor'themar pauses, so Anduin keeps it together and holds his hips still when he wants nothing more than to move them and to get Lor'themar moving. He waits out Lor'themar's breathy sounds and clenching just as the lord regent did for him the night previous.

When Lor'themar's hips awaken, Anduin takes it as a sign he can let go, and he starts to thrust upwards the way his hips so long to do. At last, the thing he's wanted--the night he was drugged hardly counts--to bury his cock in someone else's body, and here he is and it's beautiful, war-battered, courteous, melancholy Lor'themar.

Lor'themar doesn't look melancholy now, though. His single eye is narrowed with lust. It would be easy to be selfish, to just take him and let Lor'themar tend to his own pleasure while he's being fucked, but Anduin wants to make this good for him, as Lor'themar took pains to do for him last night. So, while still lying down, Lor'themar atop him, he slicks his hand with another few drops of oil and reaches down to Lor'themar's cock, beginning to stroke in time with Lor'themar's hips.

Lor'themar's calloused fingertips brush against Anduin's thighs for balance as he leans back, arching his back at an impossible angle, and he thrusts into Anduin's hands, going faster.

The sight of him is gorgeous, and the tight, precise movements of Lor'themar's hips could definitely get him off in short order, but Anduin still doesn't feel in control, and he wants to.

"Let me get on top," Anduin requests, and he doesn't tell Lor'themar specifically to get on his back, but Lor'themar eases off him and lies supine, opening his legs and pulling them back like Anduin's imagined someone doing for him so many times. Anduin eagerly gets them groin to groin and drags his cock up and down until he finds the place to sink back in. Lor'themar tilts his head back and sighs at Anduin's swift re-entry, his single eyelid fluttering. 

Anduin thrusts into Lor'themar a few more times, and he just wants to keep fucking Lor'themar until he comes. But Lor'themar attentively took the time to get him off first last night, and Anduin has always been studious; he wants to do what he's been shown is right. So sitting up, he pulls Lor'themar's hips flush against his, almost into his lap, and starts to jerk Lor'themar off again while inside him. Lor'themar closes his eyes and rests his hands on Anduin's thighs, seemingly enjoying it as he pushes into Anduin's hand. Anduin shifts his hips now and then, keeping himself edged, but mostly he holds back.

He can tell when Lor'themar is near orgasm, for his eyes clench shut more tightly and his spread legs jerk in little spasmodic movements, then open and close rhythmically to the extent they can. When Lor'themar tenses, gasps, and comes across his own chest, Anduin slides forward and drapes himself over Lor'themar, lying on him and resuming thrusting even before he's done settling down, and not holding back. He kisses Lor'themar a bit because their faces are near together, but his thoughts are entirely on his cock and the tightness of Lor'themar's body below, and he stops the kissing quickly to better focus on his need to come. Anduin pumps his hips to the point of ecstasy, feeling the pressure building to sweet agony behind his cock. He's deliriously close for a couple more seconds before he thrusts hard to his completion, gripping Lor'themar's shoulders and pushing in as far as he can when he spurts.

He's exquisitely comfortable slumped atop Lor'themar's prone form, but the sticky tackiness drying between their chests eventually stirs him. When at last he heaves himself up and off, his breath has slowed to normal, and he feels relaxed, contented and lethargic. He's still reluctant to move after he tumbles flat to the divan, but he's curious enough to run a finger through the come on his chest and taste, something he hadn't thought to try last night. Lor'themar's fluid tastes similar to his own, if perhaps slightly sweeter.

Lor'themar turns his head sideways and smiles at Anduin. His long pale hair is knotted and messy and standing up on top from being fucked into the velvet cushioning. Anduin smiles back, looking at that normally flawless cascade of hair, oddly pleased to have affected Lor'themar so manifestly. At length Lor'themar rises and gracefully dons a silken cloth-of-gold dressing gown. "I have an extra robe around here somewhere," Lor'themar offers.

Anduin shakes his head. "I should probably put my clothes on and get back," he says, and reaches for his discarded smallclothes. "I never dreamed I'd see you with your hair so mussed," he adds playfully. "Let alone be the cause."

Lor'themar glances to the mirror and runs a hand over the back of his head. "Ugh. Well, yours is no better."

"Actually, I like it," Anduin clarifies. "I'd style your hair anytime."

Lor'themar smiles again as he goes into a drawer for a comb. "I'll speak to Halduron after you leave tomorrow." Lor'themar puts both hands behind his head, beginning to comb his hair. As he attempts to unsnarl the tangles, his single eye focuses keenly on Anduin, and Anduin's become familiar with the expression Lor'themar gets when he's about to impart information he deems important. "With your permission, I will tell him of what transpired two nights ago, but not of what's followed?"

Anduin nods.

"He can be trusted not to speak of it to anyone. He will be aghast, I promise you that. He will want to apologize to you personally, and I will not allow him to."

Anduin nods again, stepping into his pants, and he stands and pulls them up and ties the drawstring, then picks up his tunic and turns it right-side out. "You would know better than me what's... the best idea here."

"You remember I mentioned a bribe to you," Lor'themar says, still fighting with his hair.

Anduin nods as he continues dressing. "Yes. I wondered. But then I wondered if I shouldn't ask."

Lor'themar draws a deep breath. "Well. If Elenos or anyone else contacts you in an attempt to blackmail, please get a message to me as soon as possible."

Anduin nods again.

"Elenos is a good boy and I don't think it will come to that, but... be aware."

 _A good boy._ Elenos, who eventually said he was nineteen. Lor'themar must think of him as a boy, too.

Anduin's romantic life is painfully ridiculous. In love and deep infatuation with a two year old dragon whelp for almost a year, and now concluding a finite two-night sexual fling with an elf lord of probably two centuries, give or take a century; he's not sure he wants to ask Lor'themar exactly how old he is. There's got to be a happy medium in the world somewhere, but so far he hasn't found it. He finishes dressing, belting his tunic flat against his hips, and he stands for a moment feeling awkward.

"Boy, huh," Anduin says, keeping his voice light as though it's banter, but the question that follows is serious. "Do you think of me as a child?"

"No. We would not have continued with this if I did," Lor'themar says gravely, and as if he knows Anduin's mind he takes two steps forward, still holding the silver comb, and pulls him close. His hair is neater and less matted than it was, but still rumpled and not remotely resembling its normal, flowing perfection. "You must know you're a rather atypical young man." Putting a hand to Anduin's face, Lor'themar pets his cheek with a thumb. "Unusually self-possessed. You seem old before your time, in a way. There's no frivolity in you."

Lor'themar doesn't seem to say things he doesn't mean, and Anduin grins, reassured. "Okay, well. If frivolity is how you measure it out, make me a birthday cake, I'm older than Rommath."

Lor'themar smiles again, but it's touched with sorrow.

"Although... this has been kind of frivolous," Anduin points out, nodding between them.

"A bit," Lor'themar says, and his face turns sober. "After tomorrow, I do not know when we'll see each other again, let alone speak, let alone in privacy," Lor'themar says. "We may, or we may never."

"I know," Anduin assures him. "I understand. I'll give no sign, soon or late."

Lor'themar smiles, though again it's muted and melancholy, and as always it's quick to fade. "You have a gentle nature," Lor'themar tells him, stroking his hair. "When you take the reins of power from your father, may the weight of leadership not diminish it... I hope that your heart will be tempered by time and not hardened."

Anduin leans into the touch on his hair, and he smiles at the unexpected blessing. "So I guess this is it then," he says. The thought makes him sad, but there's nothing to be done about it. This is what he knew he was getting, with Lor'themar.

Lor'themar studies his face. "Do you want to stay a while longer?"

Anduin hesitates.

"Stay a bit, Anduin," Lor'themar says, and he draws Anduin back to the divan and hands him the comb. Silently rising, Lor'themar retrieves a matching silver brush, comes back to sit beside Anduin, and begins running it delicately through his own tangled mane.

Anduin starts quickly raking the comb through his hair. Lor'themar's right, it's quite unkempt, though not as badly tatted as it was the night previous. He'd had to almost tear a comb through it then. He thinks, glancing again at Lor'themar's hair, that being the one fucked and on the bottom seems to make for the worst snarls.

Lor'themar's looking at him in amusement. "Stop, I can't bear watching this," Lor'themar says teasingly, and he sets down his brush, plucks the comb from Anduin's hand and demonstrates on him. "Hold a handful at a time, just a shaft or two, and comb slowly through with the other hand. If you snatch it over your whole head like that you'll probably go bald."

"Oh," Anduin says, watching in the mirror as Lor'themar gently holds and combs his newly long golden hair. "It never got tangled like this when it was short, and I always had it short," he says, to explain. 

Lor'themar nods expressionlessly at him in the mirror and refocuses on his hair, and then Anduin has nothing to do while Lor'themar works but watch. He looks at Lor'themar's face, scarred and serious, one-eyed and thoughtful. He looks at Lor'themar's hands, seemingly too large and strong for this dainty task, but Lor'themar detangles his hair with deft skill. He looks at his own hair, turning smooth and glossy again under Lor'themar's careful attentions. The extra length makes the color truly striking, he sees, as bright and burnished a gold as Lor'themar's fancy dressing gown. Mereren was right, he no longer notices the extra weight that felt so heavy at first.

After a few minutes Lor'themar puts down the comb and switches to the brush. "That feels nice," Anduin says as the bristles contact his scalp, and he closes his eyes.

"Let me do yours," he says at length, when the brush Lor'themar wields no longer meets any resistance from knots and every part of his scalp has been touched by the pleasurable scritch of the bristles. He finds Lor'themar's eye in the mirror. "I'll be gentle," he promises, raising his eyebrows meaningfully, and Lor'themar smiles affectionately at him. Passing him both brush and comb, Lor'themar turns slightly on the divan, and Anduin begins to put the regent lord's most recent lesson into practice.

Twenty minutes later, when Lor'themar's hair once again shines like a waterfall of pale molten platinum, Anduin hands him the brush and comb set and stands up. Lor'themar stands with him and kisses Anduin goodbye once, twice, then three times before squeezing his hand and taking a step back, his eye fastened on Anduin's face.

Holding his one-eyed gaze another moment, Anduin pulls out the hearthstone. Closing his eyes, he uses it to return to his room.

* * *

The morning he's scheduled to leave, Rommath comes to his door to make their final trip to the bathhouse. "May I come in?" he asks, a first.

Anduin nods, surprised, but he stands back so Rommath can enter. Anduin's guards outside his door look at him, visibly asking with their expressions whether Anduin would like them to follow Rommath in, but Anduin shakes his head, smiles at them and closes the door.

Rommath withdraws a small rectangular package from a pocket and hands it to him. "For you," he says shortly.

Anduin accepts the flat, long little box, wrapped in plain white paper, turning it over in his hands. He's not sure if there's any special etiquette for receiving unexpected presents in Silvermoon, so he only does what he'd do at home, and gestures for Rommath to please sit down in the parlor. Rommath sits gracefully, and so Anduin sits across from him.

Gently tearing the paper, he finds an elongated velvet jewel box inside. He glances at Rommath, but Rommath's eyes are on the box.

Popping open the hinged lid, he finds a delicate but sturdy, masculine, flexible bracelet of a silver metal shaped into leaves and vines all around. The leaves are set with diamonds, two diamonds on the large leaves and a single diamond in each of the small leaves. Anduin isn't sure whether the metal is white gold or polished platinum, but the whole thing glitters like a well-kept antique.

Anduin sits for a moment, looking at the bracelet. "This is beautiful... and I'm not sure I can accept it," Anduin says uncertainly. In some cultures it's offensive to attempt to refuse a gift, in others it's highly questionable to accept a gift of this level of value. He was careless to have come to Quel'Thalas not knowing for sure which type he was facing.

"This bracelet has been in my family for generations, and it had passed to the son I mentioned," Rommath says, smoothing his fingertips over the damask-covered table. "I've given away most of my children's things. The more I give away, the less I have to dispose of. It would please me for you to have this."

Anduin looks up at him beseechingly, but Rommath's gaze is lifeless, unresponsive.

"You do me a great honor," Anduin says, because that's usually a good thing to say when given a precious gift. "Thank you."

"I've come to enjoy our mornings," Rommath says flatly. "That said, I hope you'll leave and not come back."

"No, I agree it's best if I don't. Would you--" _Would you like me to wear it naked in the bathhouse, or is it not meant for public display?_ "Shall I put it on now, or...?"

"It's immaterial to me," Rommath says, but Anduin knows an offering of precious jewelry is generally meant to be embraced and treasured, and so a gift of this nature is best donned immediately to signify those good intentions. And so he places his wrist flat on the table and wraps the bracelet around, and he fumbles with the two ends with his other hand. Rommath brushes his hand away and fastens the clasp for him efficiently, the metal clicking into place.

"Thank you," Anduin says again, meaning it. He's touched.

"Mm," Rommath says, and he stands. "You're welcome. Shall we?"

* * *

As a parting gift, Lor'themar presents him with a case of Eversong wine, completing the traditional exchange of alcohol between guest and host. Anduin thanks him with the expected words. But the three of them also bestow additional gifts upon him.

Rommath gives him a basket of soaps and lotions and hair cleansers and softeners and several nail files. Rommath examines the contents of the basket as though an assistant procured it, as though he's never seen it before. Anduin thanks him, saying nothing about his previous, much more personal present, which he's still wearing but which is concealed now by the cuff of his sleeve.

Halduron presents him with a sizable wrapped gift tied with gold ribbon. Anduin unwraps and opens the box to find a red glass hookah and half a dozen bags of herb blends. Glancing over the pouches, he sees the tiny labels designating the properties of each. _Mellowing, Relaxing_. _Euphoria_. _Sleep, Sedative_. _Painkilling_. _Psychedelic_. And the one that stands out to his eyes: _Aphrodisiac_.

Halduron follows his line of sight and taps the small tied paper bag. "Be a little careful with that one," he says. "These aren't especially potent blends, but use caution. This one, too," he adds, tapping the _Psychedelic_ bag. "Make sure someone's there to keep you jumping out a window."

Every nerve in his body hyper-aware of Lor'themar standing next to him, Anduin struggles not to show any irregular reaction, or allow his face to give any tell. He only smiles. "Thank you. You did tell me I would leave here a smoker."

"Midsummer festival, think about it," Halduron says, and winks. Rommath turns his head so sharply he risks whiplash and stares at Halduron, eyes narrowed and flaring. 

"What?" Halduron says.

"One last thing for you before you go," Lor'themar says, and a servant emerges from behind a curtain carrying before him a large basket two feet long. Lor'themar gestures him to approach.

The burdened attendant brings the basket forward, setting it on the table, and Anduin sees the weave of the basket has tiny holes throughout. Lor'themar flips up the locking mechanism and opens the wide lid, and he reaches in with his calloused hands as if to withdraw the contents, but before he can do so a cat leaps out, alighting delicately on the table and rubbing her jaw against the stiff corner of the basket. Anduin recognizes the creature immediately.

"It's the cat from the Bazaar," he laughs, delighted, and reaches out a hand. The animal has been bathed and meticulously groomed, and a red velvet ribbon tied around its neck.

Lor'themar runs a hand down the cat's back in tandem with Anduin's own stroke. "I would not normally give an animal as a gift, as they require care, but I thought in this case I'd make an exception. You two seemed to like each other."

Halduron comes over to the table, and Rommath reaches down and catches an end of ribbon, tugging the bow open and off and dropping it loose on the table. "I don't know who would have tied this on," he says crossly. "Frivolous and dangerous to the animal."

"You look so nice brushed," Anduin tells the cat, stroking a hand down its back. The cat's fur feels far silkier under his hand than previously. To Lor'themar he says, "Thank you." His appreciation is sincere; the present is a thoughtful one. Anduin picks up the cat, petting her back and scratching her neck, and he deposits her back into the basket. Lor'themar hastily closes the lid.

"Please give my regards to your father, and to the Prophet Velen when you see him," Lor'themar says.

"I will," Anduin tells him. "Thank you for allowing me to visit. I'm more grateful than I can say," he says, looking at each of the three in turn, and he adds, "You are always welcome in Stormwind." He exchanges bows with all three elf lords, smiling at Halduron. Rommath's face is neutral, but the bow he gives Anduin is not curt and annoyed like it was when they first met. When he straightens, Rommath begins the spell to open a portal to Dalaran for him and Wyll and Ransley and Miller and the rest of his guards. From there they'll return home. Lor'themar raises a hand in farewell, standing perfectly still.

* * *

Anduin avoids seeking out Jaina while in Dalaran, partly because he doesn't want to advertise the fact that he was in Silvermoon, partly because he strongly desires to get home to his father, and partly because he doesn't fancy Jaina seeing him in his current state. He has no idea how to pin up his newly long hair as Mereren did, so he only ties it back as he's been doing. But his hair is no big deal; plenty of human men wear their hair long. His face is another matter entirely. His eyebrows are still dark, his lashes curled and lush, his eyelids dusted light brown, and his lips the soft, not-quite-natural pink.

And so he doesn't head for Jaina's apartments, but only has Ransley locate a mage to return them to Stormwind. When the tiny middle-aged gnomish woman finds out who she'll be portalling, she refuses to accept any payment.

Despite his always-busy schedule, his father is standing waiting for Anduin in the atrium in the keep, and when he sees Anduin, his eyes keep traveling, passing over his son to the guards standing by, as though still looking for him. At the same time Anduin starts moving forward to his father, at which point Varian's brain visibly catches up, and his eyes widen.

Anduin smiles and comes over to hug him, and his father embraces him tightly. "Welcome home, son," his father says, undisguised emotion in his voice.

"I'm glad to be home," Anduin answers, and he means it. "I missed you," he says, and his father wraps an arm about his shoulders briefly as they walk. Side by side they head together to his father's study.

"I was surprised to get your message you'd be home early," his father says. "Did something bad happen?"

"No, nothing happened, it was all fine. Only that I realized I didn't really think through the risk to Quel'Thalas posed by my presence," Anduin says. "What would you have done if something happened to me there?"

His father's face darkens. "Something like...?"

"Like if you received word of my death."

"I don't know," his father says with a grimace, frowning as though he dislikes this line of inquiry.

"Yeah, me neither," Anduin says.

His father gazes at the floor in thought as they walk. "It would depend on the circumstances they described, on who delivered the message and how, on whether they returned a body, on the condition of your body..." His father shakes his head and rubs his chin. "Frankly, I don't want to think on such morbid hypotheticals, if they are only hypothetical. Is there more to this story?"

"Not really," Anduin says.

"What happened to make you contemplate this?" his father wants to know.

"As far as dangerous, violent life-threatening stuff, nothing at all. It was just a couple of conversations I had."

His father gives him a thoughtful look, but says no more, and he waits until they have privacy to ask about his son's much-altered appearance, though going by the way he stares sideways that too is obviously on his mind. When they reach his study, his father gestures the guards trailing them to stay outside, and he closes the door and leans against it.

"Anduin, why are you wearing lip paint? And eyeshadow?" His father seems truly at a loss.

Anduin selfconsciously touches his lips. "Elven cosmetics don't wash off with soap and water. It should all fade in a few weeks. I couldn't politely say no."

His father comes closer, within arm's reach, still taking in his son. "The look's normal enough on an elf, but you look like a whore, or an actress in the theater seen up close," his father says bluntly.

"I know," Anduin says, laughing. "You should have seen when the lip paint was red."

"I can only imagine," his father says, pursing his lips in a way that suggests he really is imagining it. "It looks like they applied it with a trowel. Let me see your nails."

Anduin gives him a suspicious, surprised look.

"What?" his father says, raising his eyebrows. "I've known enough elves, Anduin, to know that if they put lip paint and mascara on you, you got your nails lacquered. Let me look."

Anduin holds his father's eyes a bit defiantly as he pulls off one white glove, displaying the bright blue and flashes of silver and gold.

His father laughs. At the choice of colors, Anduin supposes. "Elves and their fard," his father says, shaking his head.

"They were all very kind," Anduin says, feeling defensive of them. "They love beauty same as we do, they just don't stop at art and architecture. I didn't mind. Besides, I'm pretty sure this stuff costs a fortune."

His father smiles affectionately at him and catches his hand, pushing Anduin's sleeve back slightly to reveal the bracelet briefly exposed when Anduin bent his arm and tugged off a glove. His father touches the bracelet, skating a finger along it.

"A gift," Anduin says before his father can ask. "It belonged to the grand magister's son." He grows serious. "Deceased son. Rommath told me I reminded him of him."

"Grand Magister Rommath?" His father sounds disbelieving. "He's got a reputation as a battle-axe."

"Yeah, he didn't like me at first," Anduin says. He looks down briefly, gathering his thoughts, and the diamonds in the bracelet twinkle up at him. "It was kind of like with Garrosh, but with more disdain and less attempted murder."

His father eyes him shrewdly. "You attract parent figures the way cats attract fleas," his father says, but he doesn't sound like he minds.

"Funny you should say that, I got a cat, too."

His father claps a hand on his shoulder, nodding sagely. "You're going to be the greatest king who's ever lived, if only because there isn't anyone you can't twist around your little finger."

"I don't twist anyone around my finger," Anduin protests. "I just listen to people and--and talk to them honestly."

His father seems to be in an excellent good humor, and the most obvious explanation is that his father's happy he's come home. The thought is loving, appreciated. Sliding one arm half around Anduin's shoulders, his father mimes pointing into the distance. "We're going to stop going to war. I'll just point you at our enemies and give you a nudge in the back, and you can go talk out your feelings and come home decked in their jewels like a conqueror."

"Funny," Anduin says, which is usually what his father says when he's had enough of Anduin's kidding, but his father's jokes are vanishingly rare and Anduin's holding back a laugh, and as his father pulls back, he looks like he is too.

They smile up and down at each other, and Anduin feels the immense warmth passing between them, close as though they're encased in a sphere of holy protection together. Silently he says a prayer of gratitude to the Light in his mind, a few words of thanks. He could collect all the father figures in the world and it would never be enough, it would never be like having his father in his life.

"I like your hair long," his father offers after a moment. "It's so different." He takes a few locks of of Anduin's hair and frowns, rubbing them between fingers and thumb, and his brow creases. "It's so soft. Is--is it yours?"

"Yeah, it's not a wig, they grew it out. They rinse it with something, some kind of lotion that makes it soft." Anduin touches the back of his head on the other side, selfconscious now. "They gave me a bottle as a parting gift." He leaves Rommath out of it, ready to let that topic lapse.

His father studies him from the crown of his head to the place just past his shoulders where his hair stops. "Are you going to keep it this length?"

Anduin considers. "Yes, I think I might."

His father drops the handful of his hair. "You look like your mother," his father says diffidently, as if to emphasize the weirdness of such a thing, and then he changes the subject. "So did you have a good time?"

"Yes," Anduin says, pleased to share. "The Sunwell is--it's amazing."

"Tell me everything," his father proposes.

And so they sit, and his father puts his feet up on his desk, and Anduin starts to talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the huge debt here to wandavon's amazing, perfect _Everlasting Fire_. I do not want to invite comparison because I cannot write even remotely like that, but credit where credit is due, it was a major influence and inspiration. This would have been a very different fic if not for my loving that story so much.  
>  2\. I went looking for herb lore and found none save for the in-game alchemy. What I found was pretty great herb fanlore. _The Medicinal Guide to Herbs_ by Giggitygoo of Wyrmrest Accord was a resource that offered all I wanted and more.  
>  3\. A bunch of quotes were direct from _War Crimes_ , _Prophet's Lesson_ , and _Wolfheart_.  
>  4\. Title shortened from a line by Aberjhani.  
> 5\. I know common wisdom (possibly even Word of God? via dev twitter or something?) holds that Silvermoon has been fully rebuilt, but since the western half is still wrecked in-game, I wanted to attempt to write something halfway plausible about why it's still at least partly ruins. Mostly because whenever I go there (surprisingly often considering I no longer RP), I feel a weirdly strong sense of loss that it hasn't been rebuilt.  
> 6\. Although Varian only appears bookended, this fic is totally my love letter to Anduin and his dad. Varian forever. <3


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